Winter may bid goodbye next week

Winter is all set to leave Gujarat after a slight dip in temperatures this weekend, the state's top meteorologist said, even as minimum temperatures in Ahmedabad already hovered around 14 degrees Celsius, about three notches higher than expected, Wednesday.

Jayanta Sarkar, director of the Meteorological Centre at Ahmedabad, said minimum temperatures will continue to rise and that increasingly warmer days after mid-January is a normal trend.

The records show that in the Gujarat region meteorological sub-division on Wednesday, maximum temperatures already soared to 31.7 degrees Celsius in Vadodara, the warmest. Three other urban centres — Idar, Surat and Valsad — saw maximum temperatures crossing 30 degrees Celsius. Valsad saw a minimum temperature of 12.4 degrees Celsius and was the coldest.

The Saurashtra-Kutch sub-division experienced cooler weather on average, and only Amreli's maximum temperature touched 30 degree Celsius. The Union Territory of Diu, in Saurashtra's southern tip, felt the coldest minimum temperature at 12.4 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Sarkar said a disturbance over north Pakistan may cause a slight dip in minimum temperatures from January 19 as clouds move over north India, including neighbouring Rajasthan, and further east towards India's north-east region.

"The west to east movement of the disturbance may not affect us too much, but minimum temperatures may drop by a few degrees," Sarkar said.

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