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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the mother-nature-strikes-back dept.

New Delhi Television reports [ndtv.com]

April and May tend to be the hottest months in northwest India and this year has been exceptionally so.
A small city in northwest India climbed to a searing 51 degrees Celsius--or 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit--on [May 19] and broke the country's record for all-time hottest temperature [..] set in 1886. [Likely typo by NDTV; see "1956", below]

The record was broken in Phalodi, which is just 125 miles away from the city that, up until [May 19], claimed fame as the hottest location in India: Pachpadra.

[...]April's heat wave was the most intense ever observed in Southeast Asia.

In India, it lasted for weeks--but the heat never truly dissipated, dragging on into May. Hundreds of people have died from heat-related illness. Northern India and Nepal have been battling their worst wildfires in years. Officials have on occasion banned daytime cooking in an attempt to prevent accidental fires that killed nearly 100 people in late April.

The Independent adds [independent.co.uk]

Sweltering country seeks the relief of the monsoon, but this year's downpour could be up to 11 days late as officials blame climate change

[...]India's previous record high was 50.6C (123 F), which was set in 1956 in the city of Alwar, also in Rajasthan.

Hundreds of people have died as crops have withered in the fields in more than 13 states, forcing tens of thousands of small farmers to abandon their land and move into the cities.Others have killed themselves rather than go to live in urban shanty towns.

[...]The Indian Express newspaper reported [indianexpress.com] that more than 400 farmers in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra alone had taken their own lives this year.

[...]Rivers, lakes, and dams have dried up in many parts of the western states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) warned that heatwave conditions were expected to continue [imd.gov.in][1] for much of the next week in parts of central and north-west India, interspersed with dust and thunder storms in places.

Dr Laxman Singh Rathore, the IMD's director general, firmly pinned the blame for the rising temperatures on climate change, noting the trend dated back about 15 years.

[1] A web page design that would have been considered a bad joke in 1998.
It's just a link farm; I see no actual content in what appears to be the main frame--even after archive.is runs all the scripts.

Original Submission