It is an understatement to say Peninsular India saw one of its warmest winters in recent this year year. While coastal areas of Tamil Nadu are not prone to a cold snap, interior areas of Peninsular India does indeed get fairly cold during peak winter phases. But this year though places like Bengaluru hardly saw minimum temperatures dip uncomfortably. The IMD observatory at HAL recorded a lowest minimum temperature of only 14°C for the entire month on 30th January and the highest minimum temperature was 17.9°C on 8th January. The mean minimum temperature is 14.7°C for the period 1969 to 2023 at the HAL observatory, while the average minimum temperature for the year 2024 was 15.7°C, indicating how warm this year has been in terms of night time temperatures.
The city IMD observatory was even worse with nearly 2 degrees warmer than normal average minimum temperature this year compared to the long term mean of 15.7°C between 1969 and 2023. On 8th August the minimum temperature was 19.9°C which was nearly 2 degrees warmer than the previous warmest January night of 17.6°C recorded during the year of 1998 which coincidentally followed one of the strongest El Nino episodes of last century. The lowest night time minimum temperatures during the month of January this year was 16.2°C which was warmer than even the long term mean minimum temperature making every January night this year warmer than the long term minimum temperatures.
With January behind us it is only fair now to look forward to how the temperatures are going to be have during the day time rather than the night time. With the winter already being warmer than normal a cold snap is possibly going to be the last thing in mind while trying to look for sub seasonal weather trends over Peninsular India. Last couple of days parts of Tamil Nadu, particularly around South TN, saw some light to moderate rains under the influence of a weak wind convergence. Even some of the southern suburbs of Chennai saw drizzle yesterday in isolated places indicating the moisture push the Easterlies were bringing in. This spell of rain is expected to continue may be today and tomorrow before gradually drier weather will move in with models consistent about fairly dry conditions to prevail until middle of February possibly.
As dry weather firms up in a day or two gradually the interior areas of Peninsular India, including parts of West TN and South TN may start to see day time temperatures rise. Starting from today many places in West TN and pockets of South TN around Madurai, interior Thoothukudi & Virudhunagar districts may see max temperature stay around 35 / 36°C with a further couple of degree increase expected towards middle of next week. Parts of Interior Karnataka and Rayalaseema in the meanwhile is expected to see day time max temperature stay 2 / 3°C above normal most of the next week indicating the increase in temperatures over the region.