Delhi's Weather Is Colder Than Hill Stations Like Dalhousie, Dharamshala & It Is Only November

After two consecutive days, Delhi witnessed another cold morning on Wednesday, with minimum temperature settling at 10.6 degrees Celsius, four notches below normal.

Temperature below normal

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the temperature met the criteria for ¡°cold wave¡± on Tuesday but not Wednesday. For the plains, the IMD declares a cold wave when the minimum temperature is 10 degrees Celsius or below and is 4.5 notches less than normal for two consecutive days.

However, scientists at the IMD said that the temperature is expected to remain around the 10-degree mark through the week -- which is vital to declare cold wave. The minimum temperature has been hovering at 3-5 degrees below normal for the past one week.

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Delhi colder than hills

On Tuesday, the minimum temperature had dropped to 10 degrees Celsius, the lowest in the season so far. It was less than that of Dalhousie (10.9 degrees Celsius), Dharamshala (10.6) and Mandi (10.2) in Himachal Pradesh and Mussoorie (10.4) in Uttarakhand.

The normal minimum?temperature for this part of the year is 14-15 degrees Celsius. Cold waves in Delhi are not unusual in November-end. But officials said there has been no cold wave in the first week of November in at least the last three decades.

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The mercury dips to 11-12 degrees Celsius only by the last week of November, according to IMD officials.

Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of IMD¡¯s regional weather forecasting centre, said temperatures dropping to such levels were highly unusual for Delhi and NCR towns at this time of the year.

Why the unusual cold?

Delhi has been witnessing a trend of low minimum temperatures due to the absence of cloud cover, he said. Clouds trap some of the outgoing infrared radiation and radiate it back downward, warming the ground.

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Also, there has been snowfall in the higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh in the last three to four days, so cold winds from that region have started affecting Delhi's weather, he said.