Kolkata: Several parts of the city received traces of rain late on Friday night. The Met office has not ruled out the possibility of more light rain on Saturday. While the minimum temperature did not rise further on Friday, it is likely to shoot up above normal by Saturday. With no immediate change in the mercury, Christmas in Kolkata is likely to remain warmer.
The easterly wind has been injecting moisture into the land in the past few days, pushing up cloud formation. At present, the city is deprived of the cold-bearing northern wind. As a result, the mercury had been above the normal mark for the past two days.
“The window period for the chance of rain is in the latter half of Saturday. So we can expect light rain. The weather is likely to be dry from Sunday. Despite that, the mercury will not fall for now,” said HR Biswas, head of the weather section at Regional Meteorological Centre, Kolkata.
In addition to Kolkata, the Met office predicted rain for other Gangetic areas. On Friday, areas under South 24 Parganas, Jhargram, East and West Midnapore received light to moderate rain.
While the minimum temperature is expected to shoot up further and hover around the 17°C-mark, around two notches above normal on Sunday, the rain and the cloud cover will make the days colder when the maximum temperature could dip to around 24°C. . On Friday, the city recorded minimum and maximum temperatures of 15.9°C and 27°C respectively. Both were close to a notch above normal.
The chill and dry northern wind is likely to start reaching the city by Saturday night but at a slower pace. While the mercury usually starts dipping after the rain when the sky clears, another weather system of a western disturbance next week will not let the temperature drop, making the wait for the chill longer. “This western disturbance will still prevent the mercury from falling. Hence, we do not expect chilly weather on Christmas,” Biswas said.
In the past five years, apart from 2023 and 2022, Christmas and the eve of the Yuletide festival in Kolkata was relatively colder when the mercury lay below the normal mark. This year, the minimum temperature is expected to be above the normal mark on both days.
The Met office has also issued a dense fog warning on Sunday for Kolkata and a few other districts, including neighboring Howrah, North and South 24 Parganas, East and West Midnapore, and Hooghly. In the morning, visibility would be reduced to between 50 and 199 metres.