At 22.2C, Colaba enjoys its coldest May day ever recorded as rain hits city

Time of India

08-05-2025

Mumbai: Mumbaikars woke up to an unusually chilly May morning on Thursday, with the Colaba weather station recording a minimum temperature of 22.2 Celsius, the lowest for the month ever logged at the observatory since record keeping began in 1881.
The earlier record was 22.8 set on May 25, 1951, reports Richa Pinto. The Santacruz observatory logged 20.6, making it the second coldest May morning in over 40 years.At 22.2, the minimum logged at Colaba was 4.7 below normal, while Santacruz's 20.2 was 5.8 below normal.Minimum temperatures in the city during May have usually ranged between 24 and 27 over the last 10 years.Experts attributed the unseasonal chill to an unstable air mass lingering in the wake of a passing cold front, which is the boundary between warm and cold air masses. The temperature drops following the passage of the cold front, as Mumbai experienced Thursday. It marked the 3rd straight rainy day, with several areas seeing brief but intense showers.Further, day temperatures too dipped below normal in the city. On Thursday, the IMD's Colaba and Santacruz observatories recorded maximum temperatures of 31.9 and 32.6 degrees, respectively. While it was 1.5 degrees below normal at Colaba, it was near normal at Santacruz.A yellow alert was already in place, indicating thunderstorms accompanied by lightning, light to moderate rain, and gusty winds at isolated places. According to the IMD data, the 24-hour period between May 7 and 8 was Mumbai's second wettest May day in the past decade, with 32.1mm of rainfall recorded. IMD said the pre-monsoon showers were owing to a western disturbance system that led to the formation of a trough in the upper levels, which is tilting southwards, and there is a lot of moisture along this trough. This system resulted in heavy showers and gusty winds. The weather forecast for Mumbai, Thane, and Palghar for May 9 predicted very likely light rain. From May 10, dry weather conditions are very likely to resume.While the Colaba Observatory was established in 1826, systematic meteorological records that are considered continuous and official by the IMD began to be kept in 1881. This is the year from which IMD Colaba's weather data is typically cited for long-term climate trends in Mumbai.