The practicing Muslims in Karachi tend to be religious when they talk about the weather that dramatically turned scorching as soon as the holy month of Ramadan came to an end last Sunday.
“This was the blessings of the holy month during which the Almighty kept the weather pleasant for the fasting Karachiites,” said Saeed Ahmed, a rent-a-car proprietor in Keamari Town. Many in the city were found sharing this religious view during the just-concluded holy month while their countrymen in other big cities like Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore etc, were fasting in sizzling hot weather.
Karachiites without an exception feared unprecedented thirst and exhaustion during the fasting month which this year was due to fall during the sizzling monsoon season.
But, contrary to the widely-held expectations the weather in this most-populated city remained pleasant for most of the days in Ramazan which ranged from July 21 to the 19th of this month.
“The weather is under the command of no one but the Almighty who turned it cool for us during Ramazan,” commented another Karachiite Muhammad Imran.
Imran went on to say that the climate had taken a sort of U-turn since Monday, the first day of Eid-ul-Fitr, and had turned hot.
“You stand for offering prayers and you would start sweating so much so that your new clothes would get wet,” he recalled on Wednesday, the third day of Eid. This was despite zero load-shedding by the Karachi Electric Supply Company during the annual festival.
According to Met Office, during the last three days of Eid, including Wednesday, the city braved a temperature ranging from 30 to 35 degree centigrade.
The Met Office reported that on Wednesday minimum temperature in this metropolis was recorded at 26 that at one point hit the maximum 34 degree centigrade.
Among 10 big cities of the country that sizzled the most on Wednesday Karachi stood at sixth place by having sweated in 34 degree centigrade temperature.
The day under review saw Gilgit burning at 41 degree centigrade, Faisal Abad at 39, Multan and Quetta at 38 and Peshawar at 37. The Met Office recorded temperature at 32 in Islamabad, 33 in Lahore and Muzaffar Abad and 22 degree centigrade in Murree. While 44 degree centigrade was the maximum temperature recorded at Dalbandin.
For this sudden climate change in Karachi the metrologists cite reasons that are technical and not religious in nature.
According to metrologists at Karachi Met Office, the weather had turned hot because of certain developments in the Indian monsoon system. “The weather in Karachi is linked to the winds in (Arabian) sea as well as the lands in Rajistan,” said a metrologist.
When the winds run from the sea the weather remains pleasant in the city but as a system develops in Rajistan or in upper Sindh these winds are cut off. “The winds then start blowing from the lands of Rajistan that turns the weather here hot,” he explained.
The winds, the expert said, blow in the westerly and south westerly direction during the monsoon season.
About weather forecast, the expert said the Karachiites would keep braving a cloudy and sometimes partly cloudy weather for at least the next one week. “I see no chances of rains during at least one week to come,” he said adding “The temperature would remain in the range of 32 to 34 degree centigrade.”
However, according to weather forecast, issued by the Met Office on Wednesday, the whether in the metropolis till Thursday evening would be partly cloudy or cloudy with chance of light rain or drizzle.
The temperature during next 24 hours, the Met Office said, would range between 33 and 35 degree centigrade.
