Coldest day in Srinagar at minus 5.2 degrees
Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar Saturday witnessed the coldest day of the season as the minimum temperature fell to minus 5.2 degrees Celsius.
The minimum temperature was minus 16 degrees Celsius in Leh town and minus 10.8 degrees in Kargil town of Ladakh region, assistant director of the local weather office L.K. Pandita said here.
In south Kashmir's Pahalgam tourist resort, the minimum temperature fell to minus 5.6 degrees, Pandita added. Many small lakes and water bodies in the Valley have frozen, including parts of the Dal Lake in Srinagar.
The weather office has forecast a further fall in temperatures across the Valley during the next 48 hours because of clear night skies. But some locals say they have seen even more extreme weather conditions in Kashmir.
“I still remember the winter days when the then prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad drove in a jeep on the frozen surface of the Dal Lake in 1950s," said Master Habibullah, 65, a retired school teacher in north Kashmir's Ganderbal district.
“Winters in our childhood used to be more severe than now. Long icicles hanging from thatched roofs in the village were a common sight. But it is not so now. Call it global warming or whatever, the winters are definitely less severe now than in the past."
