Warm January: Bengaluru’s last decade tops list

The maximum temperature in the city on Saturday, was 30.2° Celsius — 3° degrees above normal

If your winter wear has been left in the cold since January began, it hasn’t been the first such instance. As new studies and analyses are increasingly providing evidence of winters getting warmer, India Meteorological Department (IMD) data too shows that Bengaluru has been witnessing a hotter January. The hottest days in the month have all been in the last decade.

As on Saturday, when Sankranti was celebrated, the maximum temperature in the city was 30.2° Celsius — 3° degrees above normal. The minimum temperature was 17.4° Celsius, 2° above normal.

The all-time record for the hottest January day was 33.4° Celsius on January 31, 2020, according to the IMD’s extreme weather events data. The 10 hottest days were all between 2012 and 2021, curiously in ascending order — the hottest day has been seeing a rise each year. The last recorded hottest January day was on January 22, 2021 — 31.1° Celsius.