The city will have to bear with a rainy Dashami, the Met office has said.
A cyclone on the Bay of Bengal, moving towards the Bangladesh coast, is constantly feeding rain-bearing clouds to the coastal areas of south Bengal.
Under its influence, sharp spells of rain across the city dampened some of the Puja revelry on Navami.
Cyclone Hamoon — a name given by Iran — is expected to trigger rain in the city on Wednesday as well. North-24 Parganas, South-24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Howrah and Hooghly are also likely to get rain, according to the Met forecast.
“The storm is expected to trigger winds clocking 60kmph in the coastal areas of South-24 and North-24 Parganas and East Midnapore between Wednesday morning and Thursday evening,” said a Met official.
In Calcutta, the weather should improve from Thursday, said a Met official.
On Monday, Calcutta woke up to a cloudy sky and the conditions remained overcast throughout the day.
A bulk of the rain came down between noon and
2pm.
Intermittent showers were reported from several areas throughout Monday. The clouds and rain dragged the Celsius down.
In Calcutta, the maximum temperature was around 31 degrees and the minimum around 24 degrees Celsius. Both were a notch below the day before.
But for a recurve — change in direction — on Monday morning, the storm would have had a much bigger impact on the city and rest of south Bengal.
The system, which was a deep depression on Monday morning, intensified into
a cyclonic storm by the evening.
Around 8.30am, the
storm was 510km south-southwest of Digha, a Met bulletin said.
The recurve from the morning started taking
the storm away from Bengal and towards the Bangladesh coast, where it is expected
to hit land on Thursday evening.
“It is very likely to move nearly north-northeastwards and cross Bangladesh coast between Khepupara and Chittagong around evening of 25th October as a deep depression,” said a Met bulletin issued on Monday morning.
Khepupara is around 340km and Chittagong around 540km from Calcutta.
The system was initially moving northwestwards
and then northwards before taking a northeastwards
turn.
As Cyclone Hamoon was taking shape over Bay of Bengal, Cyclone Tej — named by India — was raging over the Arabian Sea.
“Yesterday’s extremely severe cyclonic storm over westcentral and adjoining southwest Arabian Sea weakened into a very severe cyclonic storm,” the IMD said.
Cyclone Tej is likely to “continue to move northwestwards and cross
Yemen coast close to Al-Ghaidah around early hours of October 24 as a very severe cyclonic storm with wind speed of 125-135kmph gusting to 150kmph,” the agency added.
A cyclone each on the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal is a rare climatological
event. The last time it happened was in October 2018, with Cyclone Luban on the Arabian Sea and Cyclone Titli on the Bay.
