Thursday marked the hottest start to April in the city in at least nine years.

The maximum temperature was 39.4 degrees, five notches above normal for this time of the year (see chart).

The Met office has discarded the possibility of the Celsius breaching the 40-degree mark in the coming days.

“The maximum temperature is unlikely to rise further in the next few days. But it is expected to be in the range of over 38 degrees,” said a Met official.

Two consecutive days of plus-39 degrees temperature triggered a flurry of posts on social media, many of them featuring ice creams and cold beverages.

Also on the Met radar was the “low moisture content” in the air.

The minimum relative humidity — an indicator of the moisture content in the atmosphere during the driest part of the day — on Wednesday was 18 per cent.

“The normal range is over 40 per cent for the start of April. The humidity is on the lower side because there is hardly any moisture incursion from the Bay,” said the Met official.

“People are sweating comparatively less than they did in previous years.”

Many Calcuttans did not concur. “I had gone to a store to buy some clothes. The AC was on but I was sweating profusely,” said Ashoka Mukherjee, a Behala resident.

The Met office has a word of hope — a “slight possibility” of thunderstorms over the weekend.

“A trough of low pressure spread over Uttar Pradesh and Bihar… is expected to weaken over the next 48 hours. The hot and dry westerly winds originating under the influence of the trough are responsible for the hot spell. Once the trough dissipates, the winds will become much weaker,” said the Met official.

Moisture flow from the Bay is expected to go up in the coming days. Once the dry winds are gone, the pent-up heat and moisture can combine to form rain-bearing clouds.