No relief from India heatwave as death toll reaches 20-year high

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/29/no-relief-from-india-heatwave-as-death-toll-reaches-20-year-high

Monsoon still days away and will bring a change only to the southern coastline, leaving the north exposed for weeks more

No relief from India heatwave as death toll reaches 20-year high
Jason Burke in Delhi
Friday 29 May 2015 03.51 EDT

India’s blistering heatwave will continue for at least another 48 hours, weather officials have said, raising the possibility that the death toll could reach 2,000.

About 1,800 people are thought to have died in a week of temperatures touching 48 degrees in some places, the highest number of casualties for more than 20 years.

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Officials at the clinic said most of those who sought help were severely dehydrated and that the old, the very young and the poor had been hardest hit.

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Temperatures have topped 45 (45 °C = 113.00 °F) degrees in Delhi, the capital, in recent days. The highest ever recorded in the city is 47.2 degrees, in May 1944.

Earlier this week temperatures of nearly 48 were recorded in Allahabad, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and in Telengana, in the south.