For more than a decade now, Orissa has been reeling under contrasting extreme weather conditions: from heat waves to cyclones; from droughts to floods. Calamities have been visiting the state with alarming regularity.

We conducted the study described in this paper to investigate the impact of ambient temperature on mortality in the Netherlands during 1979-1997, the impact of heat waves and cold spells on mortality in particular, and the possibility of any heat wave- or cold spell-induced forward displacement of mortality.

The outstanding feature of Indian weather in the second half of April and the first week of May of the year was the extremely high temperatures over a large part of Northern India.