VISAKHAPATNAM: It seems that Kashmir came to Andhra Pradesh on Sunday with the cold wave intensifying and certain villages in the Visakhapatnam agency area even recording temperatures below 0 degree Celsius.
People elsewhere in the state too shivered under temperatures of 3 to 4 degrees.
While Lambasingi, a tribal village in the interior forests of Chintapalle mandal in Visakhapatnam district, recorded the lowest minimum temperature for this season of minus one (-1) degrees Celsius, Hyderabad recorded a chilling 8.4 degree Celsius on Sunday. Apart from 8.3 degree Celsius recorded on January 6 last year, this was the coldest since 1946.
Meanwhile, the chilly weather has claimed 11 lives over the past 24 hours. While four persons died in Gudipudi of Guntur district, two were found dead in Visakhapatnam and one each in the districts of Karimnagar, Nalgonda, East Godavari and Kurnool.
The minimum temperatures fell by 3-4 degree Celsius at many places in the state even as the Meteorological department on Monday issued a warning stating that the coldwave conditions are likely to prevail over the next 48 hours.
At Lambasingi village, 180 km away from Vizag city, the minimum temperature has been hovering around zero degree Celsius for couple of days. Tribals living in this village in the Eastern Ghats at about 3,850 feet above the sea-level claimed that it was a normal phenomenon and it can get worse sometimes, the officials at Cyclone Warning Centre in Visakhapatnam refused to acknowledge the readings as it was not officially recorded by them using proper equipment.