With frigid air sweeping through north India, temperatures plummeted to the season’s lowest in Delhi and neighbouring States on Saturday, with many places recording a minimum below 2° Celsius. The cold wave was not expected to relent until the New Year.
Dense fog reduced visibility and disrupted air, rail and road traffic. In Haryana’s Rewari district, two people died and 12 were injured in a pile-up of 15 vehicles on the Delhi-Jaipur highway due to dense fog.
The India Meteorological Department has issued a red-coded warning for Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and amber-colour warning for Madhya Pradesh for Sunday. Authorities were forced to divert four flights from Delhi airport to other destinations.
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24 trains delayed
A railway official said 24 trains were delayed by two to five hours due to poor visibility, including the Howrah-New Delhi Poorva Express.
The minimum temperature in many places in Haryana and Punjab were recorded 5-7 notches below normal. Hisar was the coldest place in the two states at 0.2° C. Several places in Uttar Pradesh also shivered as the mercury dipped to below 2°C. Muzaffarnagar was the coldest place recorded in the State, where mercury fell to 1.7° C, followed by Aligarh, at 1.8°C.
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Delhi’s Safdarjung Observatory, whose reading is considered the official marking for Delhi, recorded the minimum temperature at 2.4°C on Saturday morning.
Several parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh also reeled under the cold wave as water supply lines and parts of the famous Dal Lake froze in Srinagar. The city recorded the coldest night of the season at -5.8° C. It was minus 5.6 degrees Celsius the previous night.