Data | Kolkata records hottest April, east and north-east sizzle Premium

On April 14, 16 and 17 this year, Kolkata’s maximum temperature crossed the 40°C mark

On April 16, the West Bengal administration released a directive instructing schools, colleges, educational establishments and universities, comprising private institutions, to stay shut the following week due to intense heat wave conditions. Additionally, it even advanced the summer vacations of some educational institutions.

This was a step in the right direction because according to the data from the IMD’s gridded database, in 2023, for the first time, the maximum temperature crossed the 40°C mark in Kolkata for the month of April. The oldest data available in the IMD gridded database was from April 1952.

On April 14, 16 and 17 of this year, the city’s maximum temperature crossed the mark, peaking at 40.4°C on April 14. These measurements are for the surface temperature at two metres above ground level.

Chart 1 | The chart plots the maximum temperatures recorded on the various days of April in Kolkata between 1952 and 2023. Each X mark corresponds to a maximum temperature recorded on a day in April. The higher the mark, the higher the maximum temperature

Chart appears incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode

As can be observed, only three marks crossed the 40°C point, and all are from 2023.

The analysis in 2023 is based on the information from the first 18 days of April. However, the data was compared to the entire month of April from earlier years. To put it differently, during the first 18 days of April 2023, Kolkata recorded maximum temperatures above 40°C on three different days. In contrast, none of the days of the month of April from the previous years, even when considering the full 30 days, crossed that mark. On April 23, 2016, the maximum temperature touched 40°C in the city but did not cross the mark.