IMD scientists forecast that winter in north India would be normal this year, while peninsular India would encounter an ‘above normal’ or warmer winter. Winters have been warmer over the past three years at least.
Delhi witnessed its coldest day of the season on Sunday as the mercury dropped below 10 degrees Celsius for the first time this winter. Monday’s temperature is expected to remain in the same range.
The minimum temperature recorded at India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) Safdarjung station, which is considered the representative of Delhi’s weather, was 9 degrees Celsius (normal) early on Sunday. At the Aya Nagar station in south Delhi, the minimum temperature was even lower and stood at 8.3 degrees Celsius (1 degree below normal).
The maximum temperature, which is recorded just before sunset, stood at 28.1 degrees at Safdarjung. It was three degrees above normal. At Aya Nagar, the maximum temperature was recorded at 26.8 degrees, which was two degrees above normal.
“Earlier on November 25, the night temperature dropped to 10.4 degrees Celsius. But this is the first time in the season that the temperature has dropped below 10 degrees. The temperature is expected to remain in the same range (below 10 degrees) on Monday,” said a senior IMD official.
The official said a clear sky and northwesterly winds helped the mercury drop by nearly two degrees since Saturday. “But as the sky is again expected to turn cloudy because of an approaching western disturbance, the mercury is expected to rise to around 11 degrees Celsius by Wednesday,” he said.
The winter chill set in early this time but had almost vanished over the past few weeks due to what meteorologists attributed to a feeble western disturbance that failed to trigger snowfall in the hills of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
IMD scientists forecast that winter in north India would be normal this year, while peninsular India would encounter an ‘above normal’ or warmer winter. Winters have been warmer over the past three years at least.
The coldest December night ever experienced in Delhi was on December 26, 1945, when the minimum temperature dropped to 1.1 degrees Celsius. In the past three years, however, the minimum temperature hasn’t dropped below 5 degrees Celsius in December.