‘Thunderstorms & lightning to hit South Bengal in next 24 hrs’

People in South Bengal will witness hot and humid weather on the day of Panchayat elections on Saturday. Several districts in North Bengal will continue to receive heavy scattered rainfall.

The Regional Meteorological Centre in Alipore said that there may be isolated thundershower rainfall accompanied by lightning in some pockets of South Bengal but it will hardly reduce the humidity level.

“There may be thunderstorms and lightning in several South Bengal districts in the next 48 hours. Discomfort triggered by high humidity is not going to go away,” a weather official said.

The MeT office also said that people will continue to witness hot and humid weather on Saturday when the Panchayat elections will be taking place across Bengal. There will be heavy to very heavy rainfall in Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri in the next 24 hours. Darjeeling and Kalimpong may receive moderate to heavy rainfall.

Light to moderate rainfall lashed several parts of South Bengal districts towards the end of last week. The MeT office had earlier predicted that the mercury will start sliding up from Monday while in some North Bengal districts the rainfall will be intensified. A low pressure axis had been stretching between Rajasthan in the West up to Bay-of-Bengal in the East that brought rainfall in Bengal during the weekend. As it gradually moved towards North Bengal, rainfall intensified in the region.

The Regional Meteorological Centre on Monday had predicted that one cyclonic circulation would be situated in central Bay-of-Bengal while the other would hover over north Andaman Sea. It said that several parts of South Bengal may receive scattered rainfall along with lightning. The districts like Birbhum, Murshidabad, East Burdwan, West Burdwan and Nadia in South Bengal received rainfall in the last couple of days.