New Delhi:
The national capital witnessed another cold morning on Wednesday, with the minimum temperature settling at 10.6 degrees Celsius, four notches below normal.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the temperature met the criteria for cold wave on Tuesday but not Wednesday.
For the plains, the IMD declares a cold wave when the minimum temperature is 10 degrees Celsius or below and is 4.5 notches less than normal for two consecutive days.
On Tuesday, the minimum temperature had dropped to 10 degrees Celsius, the lowest in the season so far. It was less than that of Dalhousie (10.9 degrees Celsius), Dharamshala (10.6) and Mandi (10.2) in Himachal Pradesh and Mussoorie (10.4) in Uttarakhand.
Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the regional forecasting center of IMD, said a similar situation is expected to prevail for another four to five days.
He said the month of November this year is expected to be the coldest in the last four to five years.
Normally, the Safdarjung Observatory, which provides representative data for the city, records a minimum of 14.8 degrees Celsius in the first week of November.
The mercury dips to 11-12 degrees Celsius by the last week of November, according to IMD officials.
The senior IMD scientist said the minimum temperature is expected to be recorded in single digits in the next three to four days.
Delhi has been witnessing a trend of low minimum temperatures due to the absence of cloud cover, he said.
Clouds trap some of the outgoing infrared radiation and radiate it back downward, warming the ground.
Also, there has been snowfall in the higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh in the last three to four days, so cold winds from that region have started affecting Delhi’s weather, he said.
