Sunday was the coldest December day in Ahmedabad in last five years. But this was not the coldest ever day for the city, because the coldest December day in recent history of the city was 27 December 1983 with 3.3 degree temperature. Following is interesting write up prepared by Ahmedabad office of Indian Meteorological Department on trends of winters of Ahmedabad.

Normal Temperatures

The winter season in Ahmedabad starts from the month of December with Normal minimum temperatures falling to around 13° C .The normal minimum temperatures fall from about 19 °C in the beginning of November to 14° C towards the end. They fall to 12° C by the end of December and maintain around 12° C till January last week and thereafter they start increasing steadily to reach 15° C by the end of February. The day to day normal minimum temperatures from November to February are given in table below.

Extreme Temperatures

There are few spells in every season when the minimum temperatures fall 4 to 6°C below their normal values leading to cold wave conditions. Since December and January are the coldest months in the season, the lowest minimum temperatures recorded in each of these months during 1991 to 2009 are given in table.1.The table indicates that

minimum temperatures during December fall to about 9- 10 °C and those during January to 7-8° C during most of the years. The all time record for minimum temperature over Ahmedabad for the month of December is 3.6°C recorded on 27 December 1983 and that for January is 3.3° C recorded on 10 January 1958.

Temperatures during 2010 so far

The winters of 2010 started on a warmer note with the minimum temperatures during November remaining above normal on most of the days of November .The mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures for the month of November 2010 were 31.0°C and 20.6° C against their long period average of 33° C and 16.5° C. The lowest minimum temperature of 16.7° C was recorded on 23 November 2010. The minimum temperatures during the first week of December have been hovering around 16 to 17° C which is 2 to 3° C above normal. The temperatures have dropped to normal values from 8 December. The day to day minimum temperatures from 1 November to 10 December are given in Fig.1 below.

Outlook for the December month

The mean temperatures for the month of December 2010 are expected to remain below normal. The experimental extended range forecasts of IMD for the month of December 2010 indicates, that the probability of below normal maximum and minimum temperature is high (70 to 90 %) over Gujarat State.

Table1. The Lowest minimum temperatures recorded during December and January