It was a bitterly cold Tuesday across northern India as the weather office predicted another few days of shivering in store.
Shivering tourists stay indoors as chill takes over northern India
NEW DELHI: It was a bitterly cold Tuesday across northern India as the weather office predicted another few days of shivering in store.
The sudden dip in temperature has especially caught the city of the Taj Mahal unawares and taken a toll on the number of tourists. The mercury dipped to 2.2 degrees Celsius on Monday and touched freezing point 22 km away on the road to Mathura.
Visitors to Shah Jahan’s monument of love, particularly those from southern and western India, shivered in the long queues at the entrance. Barring the Taj Mahal, other tourist attractions in Agra like Sikandra and Fatehpur Sikri also reported a lean tourist turnout.
The grey skies and chilly winds sweeping across the near-dry Yamuna river forced many tourists to stay back in their hotel rooms.
New Delhi too was reeling under the cold, with a minimum temperature of 2.6 degrees Celsius, five degrees below normal. The Met office held out little comfort with its prediction that the mercury might sink to below one degree Celsius.
“The overcast conditions will continue resulting in fog,” said a senior official of the weather department.
“The day and night temperature will rise again around the weekend with clear skies to follow. We expect the minimum temperature to rise by at least three degrees during the weekend, if there is no further snowfall in the northern states,” he said.
“Worst sufferers are children who have to go to school early in the morning,” said Subhadra Sinha, a mother of two. But some were not complaining. “I like Delhi more in winter,” said Gitika Joshi, an HR executive in a multinational firm.
The status is no different in other northern states with the recent snowfall reported in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
In Rajasthan, Jaipur woke up to another chilling morning as the city recorded a minimum of 6.4 degrees Celsius. Pilani was the coldest in the state at minus 0.6 degree Celsius. It was followed by Sriganganagar that recorded a minimum of minus 0.2 degrees, Churu 0 degrees, Udaipur 5, Dabok 5, Jaisalmer 5, Bikaner 6.9, Barmer 7, Ajmer 7.3 and Kota with a minimum of 8.4 degrees Celsius.
Night temperatures in Punjab dipped further, with Adampur registering the minimum at minus 5 degrees Celsius, the coldest in the last three decades.
The minimum at Amritsar also dipped with the holy city recording a temperature of minus 2.6 degrees. The Halwara IAF base was also cold at minus 0.4 degrees Celsius.
v_gyan@dnaindia.net
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