Abstract

Kolkata, located on the coast of Bay of Bengal in North-East India, witnesses local severe thunderstorms associated with squalls (i.e., high wind) in every year, generally during March, April and May months. Florida, USA also experiences the same type of phenomena, generally during summer months. This article contains the results of a study on the number of occurrences of the seasonal mesoscale high wind thunderstorms in Kolkata and in Florida during the period of 38 years (1969 to 2006). Since Florida and Kolkata are situated almost longitudinally opposite to each other, it may generally be expected that the storm dataset of Kolkata may have correlation zero with that of Florida. But, it is found that (i) significantly, more than half of the counties of Florida possess negative correlation with the storm events of Kolkata, and (ii) Palm Beach, a county in Florida, bears significant negative correlation with Kolkata. Thus, inverse phenomenon (if the number of thunderstorms increases in one place, it would decrease in the other and vice versa) is found between Kolkata and Palm Beach. (iii) The number of thunderstorms in each county of Florida in 2007 is predicted by regression analysis. It is found that the actual number of thunderstorms occurred in 2007 lies in the 95% confidence interval for 85% of the considered counties. This study conclusively shows the existence of a relation between Kolkata and Florida storms.