Severe cold wave grips North India, Haryana’s Hisar shivers at 0.2°C

Haryana’s Hisar was freezing at 0.2 degrees Celsius as cold wave gripped North India on Saturday, three days before the arrival of the new year. Hisar recorded the lowest minimum temperature among all major areas in Punjab and Haryana. The minimum temperature in Delhi was recorded at 2 degrees Celsius at IMD’s Safdarjung monitoring center.

The minimum temperatures at Hisar (0.2), Narnaul (0.5), Rohtak (1.8), Karnal (1.5), Sirsa (2), Bathinda (2.3) and Bhiwani (3.9) were even lower than Shimla which registered a low of 4 degrees Celsius.

Indian Meteorological Department said severe cold wave and severe cold day conditions prevailed at many to most pockets over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh & Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and in isolated pockets over Rajasthan.

It attributed the bone-chilling temperatures to “persistence of cold northwesterly winds” over northwest India and other favourable meteorological conditions. The weather forecaster said there was no relief in sight for the next two days as the conditions will persist.

It also predicted “dense fog to very dense fog” in the areas mentioned above along with north Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and northeastern India over the next two to five days.

Visibility in most places in Haryana and Punjab reduced to 600 metres in the dense fog and led to traffic disruptions.

Two people died and around 12 were injured in a fog-related accident involving several vehicles on the Delhi-Jaipur highway in Haryana’s Rewari, said police. In another incident, a man died of cold on Friday night in Chandigarh.

The minimum temperatures at Narnaul, Karnal, Rohtak were five notches below normal at 0.5, 1.5, 1.8 respectively while Bathinda 2.3, Bhiwani 3.9, Ambala 4.1, Amritsar 4.7, Halwara 5.1, Patiala 5.1, Ludhiana 5.6, Adampur 7.2, Pathankot 7.5 were also below normal by one to two notches.

IMD says a fresh Western Disturbance is very likely to affect Western Himalayan region from 30th December night onwards. Its interaction with lower level easterlies will lead to widespread rainfall accompanied by hailstorms in major parts of Northwest & Central India and Eastern India between the last day of this year and the first of the next.