A cyclonic circulation brewing over the Bay of Bengal will bring intermittent showers to Calcutta at least till Friday.
The weather office said the intensity of rainfall the new system is expected to trigger would become clear over the next 24 hours.
“The cyclonic circulation is in the process of formation near the Odisha coast on Tuesday. It will become clearer by Wednesday in which direction it will move. If it comes towards Calcutta, the city can get heavy rainfall. If it moves away, the city will get light to moderate showers,” said Gokul Chandra Debnath, director of the India Meteorological Department in Calcutta.
Large parts of south Bengal have been receiving thundershowers since Saturday because of a low-pressure area that had developed along the Odisha coast and moved inland. The low-pressure area is moving north, which is why places in north Bengal, including Darjeeling and the Dooars, would get heavy rainfall from Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Calcutta received short bursts of rainfall a little after noon.
The Alipore Met office recorded 18.6mm of rain in 24 hours till 5.30pm on Tuesday. The department’s Dum Dum observatory recorded 3mm over the same time.
The low-pressure area has brought 34.6mm of rainfall to Alipore since Saturday.
Despite the rain, the maximum temperature in the city went up slightly on Tuesday to 34 degrees Celsius, two notches above normal. On Monday, it was 33.3 degrees.
Experts said high temperature combined with high humidity made the day “extremely uncomfortable”.
According to Accuweather.com, the real-feel temperature — a measure of how the temperature feels outdoors — was 45 degrees Celsius at 11am. It rose to 47 degrees at 1pm, when the relative humidity was 81 per cent. The actual temperature at 1pm was 32 degrees Celsius.