Heat wave intensifies, city sizzles at 42°C

Sumit Hakhoo

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 2

Severe heat wave gripped Jammu today with the day’s temperature soaring to 42°C — six degrees above normal. Weatherman said people might get respite with light rains expected on Tuesday evening, but during the next two weeks, the maximum temperature is likely to show an upward trend.

Within the city, the condition was made worse by hot winds blowing throughout the day which forced people to remain indoors in comfort of their coolers and air conditioners.

Temperature in the region has been rising steadily since the last week of April and the weather god has not shown any mercy in the past few days, affecting the normal life. The temperature also affected the water distribution as frequent tripping of power transformers affected functioning of pumping stations run by the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department.

“We had experienced such hot weather in May after 15 years. It will further rise in the coming days, but there are chances of light rainfall in the next few days,” said Dr Mahender Singh, senior weather scientist at SKUAST, Jammu.

Unusually, high temperatures in the northern region of the country at this time of the year is due to the absence of any Western Disturbance (WD), which bring rains to north India and only hot winds blowing from western Asia are smashing the great plains of the subcontinent.

“It was an unbearable day today as temperature was very high. Frequent power cuts made situation further chaotic,” said Suresh Sharma, who works in a private telecom company.

Meanwhile, in certain areas of the city water scarcity and frequent power cuts have begun to haunt people. On the other hand, wheat harvesting process is in full swing in the entire region despite the scorching heat wave. It’s not only unscheduled power cuts, which is making life miserable for those living in the winter capital during the sweltering and humid weather, repeated shutdown schedule issued by the Power Development Department (PDD) to lay aerial bunched cables has added to their woes.

Three to four hours shutdown is a routine in several localities in addition to unscheduled cuts these days. Farmers are trying their best to quickly harvest their crop in view of threat of fire, which engulfed hundreds of acres of land in the past two weeks.