Large swathes of India were sweltering on Saturday as temperatures hovered between 36 and 44 degrees Celsius with peak summer more than a month away.
Northern hill stations like Kullu and Mukteshwar, which are normally cool in early April, were sizzling at over 30 degrees - five to eight degrees above normal.
The Indian Meteorological Department said there were ‘heat wave to sever heat wave conditions’ in large parts of central and northern India.
The met department had earlier warned that summer temperatures in 2017 were likely to be higher than normal.
A recently published report in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences said there would be deadly heat waves, especially in megacities, even if global warming is limited to below 2 degrees Celsius, the target set under the Paris climate agreement.
The study's findings show that even with a less than 2 degrees Celsius rise, places like Karachi in Pakistan and Kolkata in India could expect conditions similar to their deadly 2015 heat waves every year.
At least 2,000 people died in India and 1,200 in Pakistan during the heat wave in South Asia in 2015, when temperatures hovered near 50 degrees Celsius in areas.