Winter bids adieu, it will get warmer from now in Kolkata: Met

KOLKATA: The city remained warm as the minimum temperature climbed to 17.1°C on Saturday. The maximum temperature, which stood at 28.1°C on Saturday, is likely to climb to 30°C on Sunday. Since winter has finally left the city, the warm spell will now continue, the Met office has forecast.
"Now that the chilly northwesterly has almost stopped, it will get gradually warm. The mercury has started rising and since there is no system that can trigger rain, there is no possibility of the chill returning," said Regional Meteorological Centre director GK Das.
The Met Office further predicted that the day temperature will now rise steadily till it crosses 30°C by next weekend. "The northwesterly is now too weak to pull the mercury down. With the sun getting harsher, insulation is now pushing the mercury up. We expect the mercury to touch 32°C by next weekend. The minimum temperature, too, will touch 20°C over the next week or so," said Das.
It has been a long winter in Kolkata this season. Frequent western disturbances resulted in unseasonal showers in December and January. In fact, January turned out to be the wettest since 2013. But with the cold ebbing across north India, winter chill gradually disappeared from the city. "Western disturbances prolonged winter in Kolkata. The number of sub-13°C days were, however, the same as last winter. But the chilly days were more evenly spread out through the season, which gave the impression of a long winter," explained Das.
Explaining the reason behind the sharp chill this winter, weathermen further said frequent snowfall in the northern Himalayas triggered a strong northwesterly wind that kept pulling the mercury down. It was helped along by intermittent western disturbances that sailed into central India and led to showers in south Bengal. "Whenever the mercury rose, these western disturbances kept striking. Once they passed away carrying all the moisture, the northwesterly got stronger. This kept prolonging the chilly spells," said Das.