28 Dead in Uttar Pradesh as North India Shivers in Intense Cold Wave

New Delhi: As the intense cold wave grips northern states of the country, 28 deaths have been reported from Uttar Pradesh with the weather department predicting Sunday to be the coldest day of December.

However, the government has not officially released the number of deaths and the death toll has been based on reports from various districts. So far 10 deaths have been reported from Kanpur, four each in Varanasi and Mahoba, two each in Shravasti, Banda and Mainpuri and one in Lucknow.

Aligarh was the coldest in Uttar Pradesh where the minimum temperature settled at 3.6 degrees Celsius and maximum at 11.2. Capital city Lucknow recorded minimum 7.7 degrees Celsius and maximum of 14.4 degrees Celsius.

Cold wave conditions continued unabated in several parts of north India on Friday with Delhi recording the season's lowest temperature and the IMD predicting some relief in the region from December 31 onwards.

The minimum temperature settled at 4.2 degrees Celsius in the national capital, three notches below normal.

Twenty-one trains were delayed for a maximum of six hours in the north due to the weather conditions.

In its daily weather report, the IMD said due to the persistence of cold northwesterly winds in the lower levels over northwest India and other favourable meteorological conditions, "cold day to severe cold day conditions" are very likely over many pockets of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for the next two days.

Cold wave conditions are likely to abate from these regions from December 31 onwards, the IMD said.

A dense fog is also very likely in isolated pockets of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, north Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh for the next three days, over north Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, sub-Himalayan West Bengal, Sikkim and Odisha for the next two days and over the northeast for the next four-five days, it added.

A fresh western disturbance is very likely to affect the western Himalayan region from the night of December 30, the MeT department said.

Under the influence of this western disturbance, major parts of northwest and central India are very likely to experience fairly widespread to widespread rainfall, accompanied with hailstorm, at isolated places during December 31-January 1, it said.