The winter season officially having got over on February 28, Mumbai is set to get warmer all throughout the first week of March, said officials of the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on Wednesday. The IMD officials said the average daily maximum temperature during the first week of this month will be around 4-5 degrees above normal. Experts, however, have ruled out the possibility of any heatwave affecting Mumbai or interior parts of Maharashtra. The Santacruz observatory on Wednesday recorded a maximum temperature of 33.9 degree Celsius, which is two degrees above normal. The minimum temperature was 19.6 degrees Celsius. The city recorded 37.9 degrees Celsius on February 18, the hottest day of this year so far. “For the first week, the average day temperature would range between 33 and 36 degrees Celsius, which would be around 3-5 degrees above the normal level. In interior parts of Maharashtra like Jalgaon and Nashik, the daily temperature may go up to 38 degrees. There is no forecast of any heatwave in the state as of now, since there is a possibility of the temperature again going down by one or two degrees after or around March 5,” said Sushma Nair, a scientist from the IMD. However, Mahesh Palawat, a weather expert and meteorologist from Skymet Weather Services, said that between March 5 and 7, there is a possibility of light to moderate rainfall taking place in isolated pockets of Mumbai along with areas like Raigad, Kolhapur, Vidarbha and Ahmednagar. “For the first few days of March, Mumbai will experience dry and warmer days. However, owing to western disturbances and a cyclonic formation over Rajasthan and northern Maharashtra, several parts of the state may experience light and moderate rains, which may further lead to the temperature going down by a couple of degrees,” Palawat said. “Between November and December, there were no western disturbances and the weather was dry. In January, we saw intense slow-fall due to the disturbances but it yet again declined in February, resulting in increased temperatures in parts of the country. The intensity of western disturbances has reduced, while the frequency has increased,” said Palawat. Western disturbances is a tropical storm that develops in the Mediterranean Sea and causes rainfall in northern and north-western India.
