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Mercury shoots up in Assam

Sushanta Talukdar

Schools, colleges declare special holidays

Guwahati: Several schools and colleges in Assam declared "special summer holidays" for four to five days after mercury shot up during the last couple of days making it one of the hottest summers here over the last 16 years. Most schools reopened only on August 1 after summer vacation.

Apart from Guwahati, other northeast State Capitals too experienced intense heat. Frequent power cuts made life more difficult in the sweltering heat.

The Borjhar Met office recorded a maximum temperature of 36.5 degrees Celsius at Guwahati, five degrees above normal and a minimum of 27.2 degrees Celsius on Saturday. On Friday, the city recorded 38 degrees Celsius, the highest in the last 16 years. Dibrugarh recorded 36.3 degrees Celsius, and Tezpur 36.8, five degrees on Saturday.

The Met office warned that if high temperatures continued for two to three days then the entire northeast region would experience a heat wave like situation.

Deputy Director-General of Meteorology Dulal Chakraborty told reporters that a high-pressure area above northeast had been observed due to a typhoon in South China sea and North Myanmar and low pressure over the Bay of Bengal. The high-pressure area kept the skies free from low, medium or high clouds.

The dry spell has led to a severe drought-like situation in 16 districts. Although the Government distributed 10 litres of diesel to each farmer of the affected districts for running shallow tube wells, paddy fields in most places went dry.

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