A spell of heavy rain accompanied by strong gusts of wind swept through Calcutta on Tuesday afternoon, uprooting trees, damaging vehicles and disrupting traffic.

It was the second such spell in two days. The previous bout of intense rain had lashed the city around noon on Sunday.

Sources in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation said around a dozen trees were uprooted or partially damaged during Tuesday’s storm. Some of them fell on vehicles.

A tree near Calcutta High Court crashed onto a private car parked inside the compound. Another fell on a police kiosk on Mayo Road, while a third landed on a bus on JL Nehru Road near Nehru Children’s Museum. Trees also came down in several other parts of the city, including Bentinck Street, Hospital Road, Prince Anwar Shah Road and Alipore.

Some residents said they witnessed a brief spell of hail during the storm.

Police said no casualties were reported.

Traffic moved at a crawl for much of the afternoon. A Ballygunge resident said it took him nearly two hours to travel to his office in the Dalhousie area.

The Met office recorded 59.3mm of rainfall in Alipore between 8.30am and 5.30pm on Tuesday. Most of the rain fell between 2.30pm and 4.30pm, a Met official said. In Met parlance, rainfall of 60mm or more in 24 hours is classified as heavy rain.

The Met office also recorded a strong gust in Alipore, with wind speed touching 75kmph shortly before 3pm.

Experts have repeatedly pointed to unscientific pruning and weakened bases as factors that make many of Calcutta’s trees vulnerable to strong winds. Even moderate gusts have brought down trees in the city in the past.

Calcutta also experienced sufficient daytime heating on Tuesday, with the maximum temperature touching 34.2° Celsius, above normal for this time of year. Increased moisture incursion combined with the heat to generate towering thunderclouds, a Met official said.

“It was more of a thunderstorm. The concentration of thunderclouds was much greater over south Calcutta. The northern parts of North 24-Parganas and Hooghly also received significant rain, as did districts such as Purulia, Bankura and West Burdwan,” a Met official said.

Rainfall intensity varied across the city and its surrounding areas. While south Calcutta was drenched, the Met observatories in Dum Dum and Salt Lake recorded less than 20mm of rain during the same period.

Although the monsoon arrived in Calcutta and south Bengal on June 11, rainfall remained scant during the first week after its onset. Met officials said monsoon currents have strengthened since then.

The currents remain stronger over the hills than the plains. Parts of Kalimpong, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar received very heavy rain on Tuesday.

A Met bulletin stated: “The seasonal trough at mean sea level now runs from north Rajasthan to Bihar across Uttar Pradesh. The trough from north Bihar to north coastal Odisha now runs from north Bihar to northwest Bay of Bengal across Jharkhand, Gangetic Bengal and Odisha at 1.5km above mean sea level.”

According to Met officials, the seasonal trough is driving the downpour in north Bengal, while the second trough is largely responsible for the showers in south Bengal.

The official said there is a 50% chance of rain in Calcutta on Wednesday. North and South 24-Parganas, East and West Burdwan, Nadia, Murshidabad and Birbhum are also likely to receive rain, while heavy showers are expected to continue in north Bengal.