If you are planning to visit Dehradun just to take a little relief from scorching heat, change your plan a little since boiling temperature may spoil your plan to cool your head. Humidity and rising temperature left citizens sweltering on Friday and weather department has not given any sign of relief. For locals, this summer is a scorching experience.
local residents blamed rising concretization in the city for climatic change. They claimed that that city never witnessed such sultry summers before. Felling of trees and expansion of city residential areas resulted in 'concrete' rise that made the city boiling.
Ramkumar, a resident of the town for the last five decades, is extremely sad over massive change in climatic condition of the city. He says that city weather lost its coolness due to rising number of concrete buildings.
"See, May has never been so hot. Change in weather took place gradually. Though it started around two decades ago, it caught up pace a decade ago when large number of concrete structures came up in the city. Eventually, the concrete jungles stole beauty of weather, the coolness," he said.
Slipping into past memories, when summers used to be 'cool', septuagenarian said, "I can merely talk of that beautiful weather. Summers will never be as cool as they used to be earlier. Tourists, who come here in order to take relief from scorching heat, feel cheated since they find almost same weather here."
Rampal Singh, who spent last 20 years in the city while working as a daily wages worker, is surprised over drastic change in weather. "Summer has never been as ruthless as it is this season. Earlier, people like me used to have a sound sleep under open sky as climatic condition used to be cool during night. This time, nights are also hot and it is tough to sleep."
Praveen Kumar, a software engineer, who came to the city around five years back, also agreed that the weather is changing. Five years back, summer was not as sultry as this time. It literally boils during noon. Perhaps, excess use of air conditioners brought in change in nature of summers.
He said that change in weather cheated tourists who visited the city in search of cool and found boiling weather. But summers would continue at least for this month as there is no sign of rains. Met department director Anand Sharma said, "A degree centigrade fall has been noticed in temperature on Friday as compared to Thursday. As humidity is high, summers scorched people more."