Thanks to the dry and suppressed conditions prevailing over most parts of Peninsular India Chennai is seeing winter like conditions prevail during early mornings. Today morning saw one of the coldest nights in Western suburbs as the COMK Weather Station recorded its lowest minimum temperature since February ’16. 21.1°C at the time of writing this post. Similarly the IMD Weather station in Nungambakkam was trending almost a degree and half lower than yesteday as it was on its way towards the coldest night since last winter.
As one can observer from satellite images an extremely suppressed state of atmosphere is prevailing over the Indian sub continent leading to completely clear skies enabling the night time temperatures to drop. Most interior places of Deccan Plateau has been seeing almost 3 / 4 degrees below normal temperatures in the night. With Chennai still seeing winds from the Northwest during the early mornings instead of the usual Easterlies the cold land breeze is playing its role in the reduction of night time temperatures over Chennai and surrounding areas particularly in the Western suburbs.
As one can see from the chart the surface level Northwest winds are bringing in the cold from the interior places towards the coast. With the Easterlies expected to pick up towards the weekend we could possibly see similar conditions prevail for the next day or two.