Cold, dry north India sees slide in mercury

Although it was a sunny morning in the national capital today, temperatures in Delhi did register a wee bit slide with the maximum and minimum both dropping a degree below normal at 19.9 and 6.2 degrees Celsius, respectively. There was also a light fog in the city in the morning.

The tribal areas of Himachal Pradesh froze under biting cold as the mercury stayed between -18 to -28 degrees Celsius in several high altitude parts of the state.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that two more bodies have been recovered to take the toll from the avalanche which struck Kinnaur district last night to seven.

Several areas, including the upper Shimla region, remained cut off for the sixth day today with vehicular traffic to Rampur and Dhami routed via Basantpur and Kingal while the Manali-Rohtang road was closed.

However, maximum temperatures rose marginally to stand at 22.6 degrees at Una, followed by 17.4 degrees Celsius at Dharamshala.

The MeT office has predicted dry weather over the next 48 hours with a likelihood of rain and snow at isolated places from January 23 onwards.

Conditions in Uttarakhand were dry with the minimum temperature in Dehradun being 4.9 degrees Celsius.

Conditions were slightly foggy in the morning in Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar districts of the state.

After a slight respite from the chill in Jammu and Kashmir on the back of snowfall last Thursday, cold wave conditions returned to trouble the residents of the Kashmir Valley where night temperatures dropped several degrees below freezing point.

With the weather remaining dry, the minimum temperature at summer capital Srinagar plummeted to -3.0 degrees Celsius as against -0.5 degrees the previous night.

In Ladakh's Leh, the mercury dropped from -13.6 degrees Celsius the night before to -20.0 degrees, making it the coldest recorded place in the state.

The MeT office said that cold and dry conditions would continue across the state for a few more days.

It was dry weather in Uttar Pradesh, too, which received no fresh rainfall as night temperatures fell markedly in Gorakhpur division and also registered a slide in the Varanasi, Kanpur and Allahabad divisions although elsewhere in the state, little had changed.

Sources said that state would remain dry over the next 24 hours with a likelihood of fog in the morning. MORE