Winter tightened its icy grip across large parts of north India, particularly the national capital where the maximum temperature dipped to 9.4 degrees Celsius, making Monday the city’s coldest recorded December day since 1901.
The Dal Lake froze over with Srinagar at a minimum of -6.5 degrees Celsius and Jammu recorded its coldest night in a decade with 2.4 degrees Celsius. Delhi and its surrounding areas were not just cold but foggy and smoggy too with life hit across the region.
Delhi recorded its coldest day in December since 1901, with its marquee observatory at Safdarjung recording the lowest maximum temperature of 9.4 C.
This is 11.4 C below the normal of 20.9C and is in line with the severe cold wave conditions that have gripped the city as well as many parts of North India since late December. Prior to this, the lowest maximum temperature recorded in Delhi was on the 28th of December,1997 when the mercury plummeted to 11.3 C.
The minimum temperature in the city has been 1-3C from December 28 to 30 causing severe cold wave conditions with the lowest temperature of 1.7 C recorded on 28th December.
A thick fog blanketed the Delhi-NCR region, leading to thousands of people being stranded as flights and trains were delayed, diverted or cancelled with visibility dropping to zero metres in some places in the morning. The dense fog is said to be the prime cause for the low maximum temperature in Delhi, the IMD said in a statement.
(With PTI inputs)
