Mercury jumps to 40.9°C in Mumbai, temperature to dip from Monday

IMD, which had issued a yellow alert on Thursday, warning of heatwave conditions along the Konkan coast, said that temperatures are expected to remain high for at least the next 24 hours.

The maximum temperature in the city, as per the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) automatic weather station in Santacruz, touched a season high of 40.9 degrees Celsius on Saturday. This is 7.7 degrees Celsius above normal and up from 38.2 degrees recorded the day before. IMD, which had issued a yellow alert on Thursday, warning of heatwave conditions along the Konkan coast, said that temperatures are expected to remain high for at least the next 24 hours.

A view of deserted Juhu beach amid the hot weather conditions. (HT FILE)

“Heatwave conditions are due to hot and dry winds blowing from the north and northeast of the city, passing over Rajasthan. Starting Monday, when sea breezes will begin setting in at earlier hours of the day, the temperature will drop and remain between 35 to 37 degrees Celsius till the first week of April. After that we will see temperatures rise again,” said an official from IMD’s Mumbai centre.

Saturday’s maximum reading also marked Mumbai’s third-highest March reading over the past 10 years. The highest maximum temperature ever recorded in the city (in March) was 41.7 degrees Celsius on March 28, 1957. Such high readings (above 40 degrees Celsius) have been recorded in March on five other occasions in the past 10 years — in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2020.

A similar jump in mercury was also seen at the IMD’s Colaba observatory, where the maximum temperature touched 38 degrees Celsius on Saturday, up from 35.7 degrees Celsius on Friday.

IMD Mumbai defines a heat wave for the area when the maximum temperature remains at least 4.5 degrees above normal (with a recorded reading of at least 37 degrees Celsius). If both the IMD’s weather stations in Colaba and Mumbai simultaneously record such high temperatures for a period of 48 hours, a heat wave is declared.