Delhi wakes up to season’s coldest day; cold spell likely to spill over in New Year

Delhi woke up to a shivering morning on Friday, and the cold wave is expected to keep the capital severely chilling over the weekend. The minimum temperature hovered at 4.2 degrees Celsius today, and the weatherman said that today might be the coldest night of the season.

Delhi has been bearing the ‘cold day’ spell for the past some days, and is set to make a record, i.e., to make this year’s December the second coldest month that the capital has witnessed in more than 100 years (in terms of day temperatures).
As per the weather officials, Delhi will continue to witness severe cold conditions, as chilly winds will continue to sweep the national capital, as well as other nearby areas of Noida, Gurugram, and Faridabad for the next three days. Not just this, the brave Delhiites who are planning outdoor New Year party will have to brace up for light rain on New Year's Eve as a western disturbance will likely hit the region. This will bring wet weather—rain and hail in the plains, and snow in the hills— till January 3, as stated by Kuldeep Srivastava, head of IMD’s national weather forecasting centre.
Also, the Met department issued an orange alert on Thursday for cold day/severe cold day conditions and dense night and morning fog in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, and west Uttar Pradesh till December 29.
This month is further on the course of registering a mean maximum temperature of below 20 degrees C, which as per records had happened on only three Decembers in the past 118 years since 1901, a MET official said. He also mentioned that the city has recorded the longest and the most extreme cold spell in December since 1997, and had also witnessed 17 cold days in a row. A severe cold day is registered when the maximum temperature touches 6.4 degrees Celsius below normal; and a cold day warning is issued when the day temperature is at least 4.4 degree Celsius below normal.