Temperature set to rise as city heads towards peak summer

Chennai: The rainfall earlier this week may have been a rare April blip and people can expect day temperatures to gradually rise in the city and the suburbs as May, the peak summer season, nears. IMD, which has forecast temperatures to hover at 36°C-37°C in the city on Saturday, has also warned of discomfort as temperatures may rise by 2°C -3°C along with humidity over a pocket of the state until April 20.

Experts said the city experiences mostly northwesterly winds in the morning hours. Seabreeze arrives by forenoon to keep a check on the temperatures but causes humidity levels to rise.

"Chance for rainfall is less. Temperature will gradually rise in the coming days by 2°C -3°C," said N Senthamarai Kannan, director, regional weather forecasting centre, IMD. "City temperature depends on the time of arrival of the seabreeze. If it enters land by forenoon, the maximum temperature will be around normal. If it delays and arrives during the afternoon, temperature would have spiked by then," he added. City's average maximum temperature in April is 34.7°C.

On Saturday, the city and the suburbs may receive light rain while the temperatures may be at a maximum of 36°C -37°C and a minimum of 27°C -28°C. The skies may be partly cloudy.

On Friday, Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam recorded 34.3°C and 35.8°C, around 0.5°C and 0.2°C below normal. The arrival of seabreeze around 10am kept the temperatures down but the humidity levels were around 70%.

The intense rainfall earlier this week pushed the rain records to a surplus as the Nungambakkam (city) and Meenambakkam (suburbs) stations registered 6.79cm and 7.31cm since March 1, which is 5.51cm and 5.32cm excess. During the same period, the city and the suburbs recorded 5.59cm, which is 354% above normal. In the same period, Tamil Nadu as a whole recorded 9.67cm, which is around 138% above normal.