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Street scene in New Delhi: The temperature climbed to more than 45 degrees Celsius in dozens of places
Photo: Hindustan Times / Hindustan Times via Getty Images
According to the national weather service, the heat wave of the past few days in India should at least abate somewhat in most regions.
Record temperatures are only to be expected in some north-western and central areas of the country.
Values around 46 degrees Celsius must again be expected there, while elsewhere it could be at least three or four degrees cooler.
In addition, in some places there is now the risk of severe thunderstorms.
For days, millions of residents of the subcontinent have been suffering from a heat that has not been recorded at this time of year since weather records began 122 years ago.
In dozens of places, the temperature climbed to more than 45 degrees Celsius.
The heat has soared the demand for electricity, for example for air conditioning, so that there were problems with the electricity supply in several states - and electricity purchases were rationed in some places.
The background is that the higher consumption made the coal for the power plants scarce.
To bridge the bottleneck, the authorities used additional trains to transport coal to the affected regions.
Such intense heat occurs in India from time to time - but usually only in the months of May and June.
Now there is talk of a spring-free year.
Chandni Singh, who works on the heatwaves for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told CNN that outdoor workers were particularly hard hit by the sweltering heat.
"They have fewer opportunities to cool off and can't stay away from the heat," she said.
She called for more action to be taken against future heat waves.
Mortality from heat has now fallen significantly thanks to better forecasts, she wrote on Twitter, but heat stress continues to be greatly underestimated.
"We don't have a heat action plan and there are gaps in the planning," Singh told CNN.
And: »You can only adapt to a certain extent.
This heatwave is testing the limits of human survivability.”
Apr