For almost a week now, people of Bengaluru have been complaining about the sweltering heat in the city as mercury levels continued to go up. On Monday, August 28, Bengaluru recorded its hottest August day in a decade as the temperature touched 32.6°C, which was 4.5°C away from normal, according to the data available with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Bengaluru.
The data shows that the previous highest was in 2012, on August 24, when the maximum temperature was 32.4°C. The mean temperature for the city in August is around 28.1°C based on the climatological information between 1991 and 2020. In the last week, the temperature has consistently been above 30°C in Bengaluru.
Absence of westerlies
Along with monsoon deficiency, the absence of westerlies or the winds blowing from the western direction has led to an increase in temperature this month, the weatherman said. From June this year, the seasonal rainfall in Bengaluru has been recorded as 226 mm and a departure of –105 mm, by the IMD.
“About 3.1 km above the sea level, in the troposphere, the presence of westerlies will result in cloudy conditions. During such conditions, the temperature does rise usually. But, this time, the winds are only blowing from the northwest direction and hence, the temperature has gone up,” said A. Prasad, scientist at IMD Bengaluru.
Expected to come down
However, the weather trends are going to change in the next few weeks, Mr. Prasad said. “The temperature is unlikely to jump further. It will gradually come down in the next few days as above-normal rainfall is expected throughout the State,” he said. For the next two days too, rain and thundershowers are likely to occur in a few places in interior Karnataka and rain in a few places over coastal Karnataka.
Even in Bengaluru, light to normal rainfall is expected later this week. While it has been predicted that there will be a good amount of rainfall on Friday (August 31), during the weekend, there will be light rainfall for two days. On Tuesday, the temperature hovered around a maximum of 30.6°C in the city.
