Ahmedabad, March 11 Severe heatwave conditions prevailed in the Surendranagar and Rajkot districts of Gujarat, even as an orange alert was issued for Thursday, with temperatures in many places rising above normal in the last 24 hours.
The head of the Ahmedabad Meteorological Centre, Dr. Ashok Kumar Das, said that a severe heatwave warning (red alert) was issued for the Surendranagar and Rajkot districts in the Saurashtra-Kutch region for Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the town of Diu in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, recorded a maximum temperature of 41.3 degrees Celsius, the highest in March, which is 10 degrees above the normal for this time of year, he said.
An orange alert was also issued for Banaskantha, Patan, Vadodara, Surat, Porbandar, Junagadh, Amreli, Morbi, Gir Somnath, Botad, Kutch, and the union territory, he added.
For Thursday, an orange alert remains in effect across Gujarat, while a yellow alert is expected on Friday. Das said that temperatures are forecast to gradually decline after the next two days.
Rajkot recorded the highest temperature in Gujarat on Tuesday, at 42 degrees Celsius, which was 8 degrees Celsius above normal, according to official data.
Ahmedabad recorded a temperature of 41.4 degrees Celsius on the previous day, which was 7.2 degrees higher. Deesa and Gandhinagar also recorded high temperatures at 41 degrees Celsius and 40.8 degrees Celsius, respectively, which was again seven degrees Celsius above normal.
Vadodara and Surat also experienced unusually hot temperatures at 41 degrees Celsius and 40.2 degrees Celsius, which are 6 degrees Celsius above normal.