On the 28th of May a small town in India recorded a temperature of 47.8 degree Celsius, making it the hottest place in the world for a day. Chandrapur, located in Maharashtra experienced a raging heatwave that left the town’s people dealing with such a high temperature.
Heatwaves are being felt all around the country, especially because of the delay of pre-monsoon rains. This year’s pre-monsoons have been the second driest in the last 65 years’ statistics say. The town lies in the Vidharba district which has been facing consecutive droughts for years now.
Being one of the districts suffering from major shortage of water not only in the state, but in the country, multiple farmer suicides have also been reported due to failing crops. Due to lack of irrigational sources, most of rural India is dependent on monsoon for their crops. The deficient pre-monsoons have only intensified the water scarcity problem in such areas.
While the government is planning on sending out relief to these areas in the form of cloud seeding, i.e., introduction of chemicals in the air to accelerate precipitation and eventually cause rainfall, measures are still underway and haven’t fully been implemented.
Such temperature patterns are expected to continue until monsoon sets its course over the sub-continent. Alongside Chandrapur, Nagpur also recorded a temperature of 47.5 degree Celsius on that very day.
Indian summer has only begun peaking; the temperatures are likely to increase over multiple areas all over the country, the only hope for relief is the monsoon which is expectedly supposed to set in the Kerala coast a few days from today and gradually bring relief to the country after a long, dry summer.
