City records coldest Christmas in 5 years

With the national Capital enveloped in a layer of shallow fog, Sunday was recorded as the coldest day of December in the last five years. Amid fog, the maximum temperature dipped down to 15.5 degrees Celsius, about 9 degrees lower than Saturday’s maximum temperature. 

With fog playing a spoilsport, it was not much of a Sun-day as the rays could hardly penetrate through the thick sheet of mist. All type of traffics — road, rail and air — were reported to be affected throughout the day as well as in the evening hours. The railway officials reported cancellation, delay and rescheduling of at least 80 trains while flight operation were also affected. The worst hit was vehicular volume on the city roads as cars were seen running at snails’ pace.

As per an official of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), maximum temperature settled at 15.4 degrees Celsius and the minimum temperature was recorded at 11.5 degrees Celsius, while the visibility was recorded 500 metre, considered as low for the period. At 8.30 am, the visibility was recorded at 600 metre. It further dropped to 300 metre at 11.30 am before improving three hours later.

Normally the sun was not visible throughout the day but the IMD official said that on Sunday sunrise was recorded at 7.30 am and sunset at 17.32 pm. The weatherman has further said that maximum humidity was recorded at 98 per cent, whereas the minimum was 91 per cent.

Saturday’s maximum and minimum temperatures were recorded at 24.5 degrees Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius respectively while the IMD department has forecast that Monday’s maximum and minimum temperatures would hover around 21 degrees Celsius and 10 degrees Celsius respectively. 

“The sky will remain clear throughout the day. Mist or shallow fog is likely to occur in the morning on Monday,” the IMD official said, adding that visibility would be between 500 to 600 metre.

“As many as 80 Delhi-bound trains were running behind schedule by several hours, while 23 others required to be rescheduled owing to poor visibility. The 34 services, which were announced as cancelled between the period December 17 and January 15, only remain cancelled. There is no fresh cancellation,” a railway official said. With this, thousands of passengers were left stranded at various railway station due to dense fog conditions in several parts of North India.