The weekend plans of people were disrupted as Bengaluru received non-stop rains brought in by Cyclone Mandous.
The cyclone has weakened after it made landfall off Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu and is on the retreat.
The city is expected to get rain until Tuesday, after which the skies will gradually clear out.
On Saturday, Bengaluru city recorded the lowest maximum temperature in the month of December in the past 12 years.
The maximum temperature at 5.30 pm was 19.6°C, a fall of nearly 7°C from normal.
In contrast, the minimum temperature stood at 16.8°C, 0.8°C higher than the norm. The IMD’s weather station at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) recorded an even lower maximum temperature — 18.7°C.
Relative humidity, which refers to the moisture content of the atmosphere, also stayed high.
It was 92 per cent at 5.30 pm in the city, 38 per cent higher than normal. The HAL airport station recorded a relative humidity of 100 per cent, a whopping 45 per cent above normal.
There was a chill in the air throughout the day because of high relative humidity and the small difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures. This forced citizens to call off their weekend plans and stay indoors. Because of the nonstop rain, some parts of the city also witnessed traffic jams.
The rain barely paused. By 5.30 pm, the city weather station recorded 12 mm of rainfall. The HAL airport station recorded 11.6 mm, while the KIA recorded 24 mm of rainfall.
The Indian Meteorological Department has forecast light to moderate rainfall till December 12. “Things will improve only after that,” said A Prasad, head of the department’s Bengaluru centre.
Prasad, however, cautioned that coastal Karnataka would get rain for several more days as the cyclonic system would move westwards before emerging in the Arabia Sea and heading towards West Asia.
But there is almost no possibility of a cyclone on the west coast because the sea surface temperature is less than 20°C, he added.