Ramagundam hottest place in Telangana with 46.4 degree celsius

The hot weather conditions in northern India intensified on Monday with Delhi, Jammu, Srinagar and Shimla recording their highest temperatures of the season. Down south in Telangana, the toll due to the heat wave rose to 178.

The mercury is expected to keep rising in Uttar Pradesh over the next few days but people in Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir and tourist destinations of Himachal Pradesh can expect some relief from the heat, the weather office said.

The heat conditions have forced the authorities to change school timings in Lucknow.

The hottest day of the national capital coincided with a protest by taxi drivers over the Supreme Court decision to ban cabs operating on diesel and petrol. School children and office-goers faced hardships in the scorching heat, particularly on the Delhi-Noida and Delhi-Gurgaon borders.

The maximum temperature in Delhi on Monday was 44 degrees Celsius, five degrees above normal, while the minimum was 23.8 degrees, one notch below the season's normal.

Meteorology department officials, however, said the heat wave conditions in the city were expected to come down due to rain or thunderstorm over the next few days. They said the



maximum temperature on Tuesday may hover around 40 degrees and similar pattern is expected till Friday.

In Telangana, five more deaths were reported since Sunday, taking the toll to 178 so far this season. Nalgonda accounts for maximum number of deaths (53), followed by Mahabubnagar (33) and Medak (30). Seventeen died in Adilabad, 15 in Karimnagar, 10 each in Khammam and Ranga Reddy, nine in Nizamabad and one in Warangal. No deaths were reported from Hyderabad, the official said.

In a tragic incident in Adilabad district, two children died of heat while crossing a forest. The boys aged 14 and eight collapsed and died while walking with their mother from one village to another on Sunday.

Many parts of the state remained in the grip of a heat wave despite rains or thundershowers at a few places. Ramagundam was the hottest place with the maximum temperature at 46.4 degrees Celsius.

Unlike Telangana, authorities in Andhra Pradesh have not been providing information with regard to the toll. Deputy Chief Minister N. Chinnarajappa had said on April 2 that 45 people died because of sun-stroke but since then, there has been no update on the number of deaths.