New Delhi: Cold wave conditions continued to tighten their grip on the national capital for the fifth straight day on Thursday, with Delhi recording its coldest morning of the season and a yellow alert in place as the chill is expected to persist into Friday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
At Safdarjung, Delhi’s primary weather station, the minimum temperature plunged to 2.9 degrees Celsius, nearly five degrees below normal, marking the city’s coldest morning of the winter so far. The reading was also Safdarjung’s lowest January minimum since 2023, when the mercury had fallen to 1.4 degrees Celsius on January 16. Day temperatures remained subdued, with Safdarjung recording a maximum of 19.5 degrees Celsius, around 0.4 degrees below the seasonal average.
The chill was reflected across stations in the city, with Palam registering a maximum of 16.2 degrees Celsius, 3.5 degrees below normal, while Lodhi Road recorded 19.4 degrees, the Ridge 19.0 degrees, and Ayanagar 19.4 degrees, IMD data showed. Minimum temperatures also stayed well below average: Palam recorded 2.3 degrees Celsius, Lodhi Road 3.4 degrees, the Ridge 4.5 degrees, and Ayanagar 2.7 degrees.
At Palam, the minimum of 2.3 degrees Celsius was noted as the lowest since 2010; the second-lowest was recorded on January 7, 2013, when the minimum dipped to 2.6 degrees Celsius. The IMD said cold wave conditions have prevailed over Delhi for the last several days and are expected to continue even on Friday, with the maximum likely around 21 degrees Celsius and the minimum near 4 degrees Celsius.
The cold persisted despite the festive season in the north, as India celebrates harvest festivals signalling the end of shorter winter days and the onset of longer, warmer ones. Yet across northern states, temperatures dropped close to freezing levels. In Haryana, Hisar emerged as the coldest location in the state at 0.2 degrees Celsius. Other places recorded similarly low minimums: Narnaul at 1.5 degrees, Nuh at 4.6 degrees, Gurugram at 5.3 degrees, Ambala at 5.0 degrees, Karnal 4.8 degrees, Faridabad 4.1 degrees, and Rohtak 4.4 degrees, with readings reported to be up to four notches below normal.
In Punjab, the IMD said Bathinda was the coldest place at 1.6 degrees Celsius. Minimum temperatures in other cities included Amritsar 5.3 degrees, Ludhiana 5.2 degrees, Patiala 5.1 degrees, Hoshiarpur 4.4 degrees, and Faridkot 3.5 degrees. Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, recorded a minimum of 4.5 degrees Celsius.
In Delhi, the biting cold coincided with another persistent concern: air pollution. The city’s 24-hour average Air Quality Index (AQI) stood at 349, placing it in the ‘very poor’ category, according to Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data. Several monitoring stations also remained in the same bracket, with the 24-hour average across stations at 343. As per CPCB’s SAMEER app, 34 stations were in the ‘very poor’ category and five in ‘poor’, with Pusa recording the worst AQI at 386.
Officials said pollution sources within Delhi were led by transport (13.9 per cent), followed by Delhi and peripheral industries (11.4 per cent), residential emissions (3.3 per cent), construction (1.7 per cent) and waste burning (1.2 per cent), as per the Delhi Decision Support System (DSS). Among NCR districts, contributions were led by Jhajjar (21.7 per cent), followed by Rohtak (5.2 per cent), Bhiwani (4.3 per cent), Sonipat (3.2 per cent) and Gurugram (1.5 per cent).
The Air Quality Management System projected air quality to remain ‘very poor’ on January 16 and 17, and possibly worsen to ‘severe’ on January 18, with the outlook for the following six days indicating oscillation between ‘severe’ and ‘very poor’.
Weather forecasters, meanwhile, pointed to a mixed outlook. “Looking ahead, minimum temperatures are expected to begin rising gradually from January 17 to January 20, with light winter rainfall activity likely over the next few days,” Mahesh Palawat of Skymet Weather said. He added that another cold spell is expected between January 23 and January 26, when temperatures could dip again to icy levels.
Elsewhere, cold conditions extended beyond northern India. In Kashmir, temperatures rose slightly but remained well below freezing. Srinagar recorded minus 3.9 degrees Celsius, up from minus 5.2 degrees the previous night, and parts of water bodies including interiors of Dal Lake froze amid the ongoing winter period known as ‘Chilla-i-Kalan’, which began on December 21 and will continue until January 30. In eastern India, Gumla recorded 0.8 degrees Celsius in Jharkhand amid a cold wave alert, while West Bengal’s Darjeeling district recorded a minimum of 3 degrees Celsius, and Odisha also continued to battle low temperatures across multiple locations.