JOIN USWinter intensified its grip over North India on Thursday with hilly areas of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh reeling under freezing cold and thick fog affecting normal life in vast swathes of the plains.
Delhiites on Thursday woke up to a foggy morning with minimum temperature settling at 7.4 degrees Celsius.
The maximum in Delhi settled three notches below normal at 19.6 degrees. Cold conditions prevailed at several places in Punjab and Haryana, where a heavy blanket of fog affected road traffic for the second day on Thursday.
Amritsar reeled under intense cold, recording a minimum temperature of 2.4 degrees Celsius, two notches below normal. Ludhiana and Patiala registered minimum temperatures of 8.8 and 8.4 degrees Celsius respectively.
Chandigarh, which recorded a low of 8 degrees Celsius, was enveloped in thick fog in the morning. In Haryana, Narnaul was the coldest, where the minimum stood at 3 degrees Celsius. Hisar recorded a low of 4 degrees.
In Kashmir, Leh town in Ladakh region recorded a season-low of minus 14.6 degrees Celsius. A Met department official said Srinagar recorded a slight drop in the night temperature, with the mercury settling at a low of minus 4.2 degrees Celsius as compared to minus 4 degrees the previous night.
Leh had recorded a temperature of minus 13 degrees Celsius the previous night. After Leh, Kargil town was the second coldest place in the state with minus 14.4 degrees Celsius, the official said.
Pahalgam was the coldest recorded place in the Valley with a low of minus 6.6 degrees Celsius, against the previous night’s 6.8 degrees, the official said. Gulmarg recorded a minimum of minus 2.2 degrees Celsius, compared to the previous night’s minus 3.0 degrees.