At minus 0.8, Srinagar records season’s first sub-zero night

As a cold wave further tightened its grip over Kashmir on Wednesday, Srinagar witnessed the coldest and the first sub-zero night of the season thus far as the mercury plummeted to minus 0.8 degree Celsius.

A MeT official said temperatures across the Valley, except Kokernag in south Kashmir, settled below the freezing point on Tuesday night.

The minimum temperature in Pahalgam hill resort in south Kashmir, which serves as a base camp during the annual Amarnath yatra, settled at minus 4.8 degrees Celsius, and was the coldest recorded place in the Valley, he said. In the ski resort of north Kashmir’s Gulmarg, the minimum night temperature settled at minus 3.8 degrees Celsius.

Kokernag, which recorded a low of 0.3 degrees Celsius, was the only meteorological station in the Valley where the minimum temperature stayed above the freezing point, the official said.

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In the Leh town of the frontier Ladakh region, the mercury settled at minus 9.6 degrees Celsius while the neighbouring Kargil town recorded a low of minus 8.4 degrees, he said. Drass area in Kargil, the second coldest inhabited place in the world after Siberia, recorded a bone chilling low of minus 13.7 degrees Celsius.

The wintry conditions in Kashmir have set in much ahead of the beginning of the extremely harsh winter weather that usually sets in around the third week of December. 'Chillai Kalan', the 40-day period of harshest winter in Kashmir, begins on December 21 and ends on January 30.

The MeT office said the mercury is expected to dip further as the days would be clearer and warmer, but the nights will be colder.