For a change, morning did not show the day on Sunday. Residents woke up to bright sunshine but clouds covered the city skies by the evening, prompting drizzles in the night.

The city did not receive a single drop of rain till the evening. But weathermen were optimistic about precipitation in the night. So it did at night, and residents experienced the first summer rain this year.

The morning-after would be balmy in all likelihood. The cloud cover is expected to last till Monday. There is a possibility of a few spells of drizzles as well. High-speed easterly winds blowing at an average speed of around 15-20kmph are expected to accompany the showers.

The clouds might not bring much shower but they obviously helped in bringing down the soaring mercury. After nearly a week-long heatwave conditions in the city, the mercury slipped below the 40°C-mark on Saturday. The change in the wind direction from dry easterly to moist easterly on Friday paved the way for dip in the temperature and the arrival of the clouds.

The maximum temperature in the city on Saturday was 39.4°C. On Saturday, it further climbed down to 39.2°C — still a degree above normal. Yet, the city was much cooler compared to Wednesday, when the maximum temperature stood at 43.4°C — the second hottest day for the season.

The drop in maximum temperature was observed in other parts of the state as well. From 41.2°C on Saturday, the maximum temperature in Bhagalpur came down to 38.4°C on Sunday. Similarly, in Gaya, the maximum temperature came down from 42.5°C on Saturday to 40°C on Sunday.

The weathermen claimed that the cloudy conditions would bring down the maximum temperature by another two to three degrees by Tuesday. The cloud cover as well as the high-level of moisture content in the air would continue to obstruct the solar rays and bring down the temperature.

The weathermen attributed the onset of the cloudy weather to a deep-depression formed over the Bay of Bengal earlier this week. “The deep-depression had weakened a bit and turned into well-marked low-pressure area on Sunday. It was lying over northeast-central Bay of Bengal on Sunday evening. While it led to light to moderate rainfall in Odisha and several parts of Bengal, including Calcutta, no rainfall was recorded from any of our observatories in Bihar on Sunday,” said R.K. Giri, meteorologist, India Meteorological Department (IMD), Patna.

Giri added that the clouds seen on the city skies were at low to medium level and they were lying up to 4 to 5km above earth’s surface.

The cloudy conditions provided an ideal outing opportunity to the residents to hit the hangout hotspots in the city. Rajdhani Vatika, popularly known as Eco Park, was almost empty up to 3pm . But the situation changed drastically over the next two hours and people thronged the park after the skies were gradually covered with clouds.

“I was trying to go to Eco Park with my kids on Sunday for the past two weeks but could not because of the scorching heat. The moment I saw the cloudy skies this (Sunday) evening, I asked the kids to get ready and we enjoyed the next few hours at the park,” said Ajay Kumar, a resident of Gardanibagh.