The death toll due to sunstroke in the State rose to eight with the Government receiving six more confirmed cases from different district Collectors on Friday.
On the other hand, Talcher continued to be the hottest place in the State for the third consecutive day on Friday recording temperature at 45 degrees Celsius even though temperature came down to below 40 degrees Celsius in most of the places in interior districts.
Talcher had recorded 45.5 degrees Celsius, the highest ever temperature during the current summer, on Thursday.
However, temperature remained at 40 degrees and above in eleven towns and cities, namely Chandbali (40.9), Bhubaneswar (40.6), Angul (40.3), Jharsuguda (40.3), Sambalpur (40.2), Sundargarh (40.5), Hirakud (40.1), Bhawanipatna (42.5), Titlagarh (42.2) and Subarnapur (42.6).
The local Met office predicted that the heat wave condition would prevail in the next five days while there is possibility of rain and thundershower at some places in the next 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the official death toll due to heat wave conditions rose to eight with the Special Relief Commissioner receiving six more confirmed sunstroke deaths from district Collectors.
According to sources in the SRC office here, so far 37 heat wave casualties have been reported from across the State. While highest two persons died in Mayurbhanj district, one each died in Cuttack, Khordha, Kendrapada, Jajpur, Balangir and Bhadrakh district.
Of the reported deaths, final report has been received in 23 cases of which eight persons died of sunstroke and 15 due to other reasons and the rest 14 cases were under investigations. According to sources, in last 16 years as many as 3,089 died in sunstroke and out of these, 2,042 had died alone in 1998.