NEW DELHI: Severe cold conditions with dense fog have disrupted day-to-day life in major parts of northern India. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has now issued a health advisory and urged people to take precautions.
The IMD in its health advisory has said that the dense fog contains particulate matter and other pollutants that can impact the functionality of the lungs, and cause eye irritation, and respiratory problems.
A long exposure increases episodes of wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath and deteriorates asthma, bronchitis and other lung-related health problems, irritating the membranes of the eye and causing various infections leading to redness or swelling of the eye.
It further added that the severe weather condition is likely to continue over some parts of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan during the next 2 days and decrease thereafter.
Cold day conditions are defined as when minimum temperatures get below 10 °C and Maximum temperatures depart from normal by -4.5°C to -6.5 °C, when its further departure is more than -6.4 °C then it gets into a severe Cold Day.
The minimum temperatures are in the range of 4 to 8°C over most parts of Punjab, Haryana-Chandigarh, West Uttar Pradesh and north Rajasthan and in the range of 9 to 12°C over Delhi, East Uttar Pradesh, north Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and south Rajasthan. Moreover, the maximum temperatures vary from 10°C to 16 °C in different parts of north India.
On January 5, the lowest minimum temperature of 1.0°C was reported at Sikar (East Rajasthan).
Apart from it, a fresh spell of western disturbance will lay over higher altitudes of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the next two days causing the season’s heavy snowfall. It will bring light to moderate rainfall in the Northern plains of India.
Another cyclonic circulation existed over Haryana and an anti-cyclonic circulation over Odisha will create instability in weather conditions such as it will cause thunderstorms, lightning, rainfall, and hailstorms over north Madhya Pradesh, south Bihar, North Chhattisgarh, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Vidarbha in next two days.
In its extended range forecast for the next two weeks, the IMD forecasted overall rainfall activity is likely to be below normal over all the homogenous regions of India. A fresh spell of rainfall with isolated heavy rainfall is likely over extreme south Peninsular India during the next 4-5 days.