The easterly winds visiting the city has brought with them typical weather conditions with day temperatures exceeding 36 degrees and nights hovering around a pleasant 20°C. For the past few days Mumbai is seeing extremely hot days and cold nights. Officials at the India Meteorological Department said that easterly winds are characteristic of this time of the season. These warm land-bound winds are dry in nature. They raise the day temperatures and delay the onset of sea breeze, explained K Satidevi,director of IMD Mumbai. In Mumbai,weather remains moderate for mostpart of the year because the moisture-laden sea breeze usually balances the temperatures bringing down mercury when its too hot in the day and raising it when its too cold at night. The Met director said,These are all the reasons why the humidity is so low these days and dry weather prevails. Besides clear cloudless skies are also contributing to the high contrast between the day and night temperatures. On Wednesday,Colaba recorded 36.7 °C maximum and 24.3 °C minimum while Santacruz recorded 36.6°C and 19.6°C minimum temperature. The relative humidity dipped at 71 per cent in Colaba and 47 per cent in Santacruz. Satidevi,however,said that winter hasnt begun in Mumbai yet. We classify the period between October and December as the cyclone season. This is the period when low pressures develop in the Bay of Bengal as well as the Arabian Sea and often cyclones are formed. However,so far,only small low pressure patches have been noticed this year, she explained. This is also the time when the southern peninsula experiences north-eastern monsoon she added saying that there is a possibility of light showers in a few regions of southern Maharashtra at this time.
