Delhi takes a chill pill

Bitter cold wave sweeps across the city, fog prevails

Waiting for the sun to shine: A woman waiting at the Tilak Bridge railway station

Bitter cold wave sweeps across the city, fog prevails

Delhi continued to shiver under the chilling cold wave sweeping across north India on Sunday.

The bitter cold forced schools to extend their winter vacations till January 11. The schools were to re-open after the break from today.

Bonfires could be seen at every nook and cranny in the city with almost no sun showing the whole day. The minimum temperature on Sunday was recorded at 18 degrees Celsius, four degrees below normal.

The city has been experiencing a cold wave for several days. On Saturday, the minimum temperature dropped to 5.4 degrees Celsius while Friday remained the coldest day of the season at 4 degrees Celsius.

The Meterological department hasu00a0 forecast that the minimum and maximum temperature on Monday is expected to be 7 and 20 degrees Celsius, respectively.

Beating the chill in style: Foreign tourists (left) and a young woman sipping coffee Pics/ Rajeev Tyagi

The National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) predicted fog in morning and evening was likely to continue for next 2-3 days.

Fliers continued to have a gruelling time at the IGI airport on Sunday as around 20 flights were cancelled while nearly 100 both from domestic and international airlines were delayed by up to three hours due to fog and clearance of backlog of earlier schedules.

Despite not so dense fog condition at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport, about 13 flights were rescheduled and 10 (eight domestic and two international) were diverted to Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Jaipur to clear a huge backlog from Saturday.

Several airlines combined their early morning flights due to low passenger load and in anticipation of fog, which has been affecting the smooth flight operations since Monday.

Most of the trains were also reported running late.