NEW DELHI: The national capital continued to reel under severe cold on Thursday, with the weather forecasters saying that the biting, icy chill is going to persist for the next three days.Vast swathes of north India have been in the grip of a severe cold wave over the last couple of weeks and there is no word of a respite anytime soon.“The severe cold spell (in Delhi) has now gone on for 13 days in a row. The biting chill took effect on December 14 and is likely to persist over the next three days. The mercury will continue to drop over the weekend and the maximum temperature is likely to hover around 14-15°C mark,” Kuldeep Srivastava, a senior scientist with the India Meteorological Department (IMD), told this newspaper.
Delhi-NCR is expected to record its second-coldest December since 1901, the weather department said. “The mean maximum temperature for December was less than 20°C only in 1919, 1929, 1961 and 1997,” an IMD official said, adding, “The mean maximum temperature till Thursday was 19.85°C. It is expected to dip to 19.15°C by December 31.” He said the prevailing cold spell could be largely attributed to the icy winds blowing in from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir — regions that have been experiencing heavy snowfall.
He said the skies are likely to remain overcast into the weekend. “The layer of cloud, which hangs over the city right now, spans from Punjab to Uttar Pradesh. It is because of this thick layer of cloud that the sun is not being able to breakthrough. Since the cloud cover is likely to persist, the city won’t experience much sunshine over the next few days,” a Met official said.
While there was no relief from the cold on Thursday, the city’s overall air quality, too, slipped into ‘poor’ category. The overall air quality index (AQI) for the city was recorded at 332 on Thursday, according to SAFAR, the air quality monitoring system of the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences.
“The overall Delhi AQI was in the middle-end of the very poor category on December 26 morning, as forecast. SAFAR model suggests an extended period of calm surface winds from December 27 and strong near-surface inversion on December 28 and 29 night and shallow boundary layer on daytime. On December 27, AQI is likely to deteriorate towards the higher end of the ‘very poor’ category and touch the ‘severe’ by December 28,” SAFAR stated.