India, Oct. 17 -- Up to last week, India's average maximum temperature - a proxy for daytime temperatures - in October was so far below usual that the month on average was running fifth coolest since 1951, as HT reported at the time. That downward deviation's impact was present this week too, but large parts of northern India are likely to have felt the cool weather easing somewhat, an HT analysis of the gridded data of India Meteorological Department (IMD) suggests. This has happened because the weather systems that were keeping the weather cool have subsided.

The impact of the downward deviation in the month's first nine days can be seen in the fact that October so far is still ranked sixth coolest since 1951 by maximum temperature. Ho...