Hyderabad at 42.8 degree Celsius, smartphone apps put it at 45

Hyderabad: The IMD on Monday recorded a maximum temperature at 42.8ºC. Smart-phone apps showed the city touching 45ºC which, if true, would have been the highest in the city’s history. Fortunately, it was not.

IMD- Hyderabad director Y.K. Reddy said the maximum was 42.8ºC and minimum 27.8ºC. “Smart-phones quote various weather  sites, but it is not known where these sites gather their data from. The most quoted is accuweather.com. But there are so many websites and each one shows slightly different figures. The figures provided by the IMD are official and authentic,” he said.

Read: Heat wave for 5 days in Telangana: Met department

He said at IMD stations across the two states, the temperatures are recorded manually, trained staff with four different types of thermometers manually record the maximum and minimum temperatures and relative humidity every day.

“The only drawback is that the network density is not very high. In Hyderabad there is only one observatory.”

Watch: Woman cooks eggs on floor in Telangana as heatwave intensifies

Mr Reddy said in cities there is a possibility of intra-city weather variations, which means the temperature recorded at Begumpet will be slightly different from that of hilly areas like Banjara Hills or near a water body like Tank Bund. “There will be slight variations every 2 km. Due to lack in network density, this is not being captured by IMD,” he said.

All Should rely on our data: IMD
Speaking about figures being put out by other agencies, IMD- Hyderabad director Y.K. Reddy said the weather bureau’s figures are official. “The equipment is of very high quality and they are well calibrated from time to time. People should depend on the official data and not on private sites. IMD has its own app, people can log on to imd.gov.in and download it, this will provide data every three hours,” he said.

Meanwhile the Met department stated that there would be no respite for people in Telangana and Rayalaseema from severe heat wave for the next three days.

Severe heat wave conditions are likely to prevail over many parts of Telangana and Rayalaseema during the next 72 hours. There wont be any major change in maximum temperatures.  

The highest maximum temperature of 45.1ºC was recorded at Kurnool, Ramagundam was 45ºC, Anantapur 44.5ºC, Nalgonda 44.2ºC, Nizamabad 44.6ºC and Tirupati 42.8ºC.