New Delhi, Mar 9 (UNI): Delhi continued to reel under unusually warm conditions, with the maximum temperature crossing 35°C for the third consecutive day.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the city’s base weather station at Safdarjung Observatory recorded a maximum temperature of 35.3°C on Monday, nearly 7°C above the normal for this time of the year.
According to IMD data, this is the third straight day of appreciably above-normal temperatures in the national capital. The mercury had risen to 35.7°C on Saturday, an unusually high reading for the first week of March.
In comparison, last year the temperature crossed the 35°C mark only in the second week of March, on March 14, when it touched 36.2°C. In recent years, the closest early instance was in 2021, when the mercury exceeded 35°C on March 11.
The weather department has forecast a further rise in temperatures in the coming days, with the maximum in Delhi likely to reach around 38°C by Wednesday.
While Delhi is experiencing a warmer-than-usual March, conditions are even more severe in parts of northwestern India.
“Severe heatwave conditions prevailed at many places over Saurashtra and Kutch, at a few places over the Gujarat region, and in isolated pockets of Himachal Pradesh on March 9,” IMD officials said.
Temperatures crossed 40°C at several locations in the region. Rajkot and Surendranagar recorded 41.6°C each, followed by New Kandla (41.4°C) and Ahmedabad (41.2°C).
Meteorologists attribute the early spike in temperatures to weak western disturbances. Some experts have also flagged the increasing likelihood of the development of El Niño conditions later this year. El Niño, a periodic warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, can influence weather patterns across the world, including India’s monsoon.
