Mercury dips ‘below zero’ at Maha’s popular hill station
MAHARASHTRA : Tourists arriving at Mahableshwar, a popular hill station from western Maharashtra, were in for a pleasant surprise on Sunday morning.
Locals claimed that mercury dipped to freezing point at Venna Lake and snowflake-like frozen dew drops were seen in the surrounding areas.
While the Indian Meteorological Department said it did not have observatory at Venna lake, the locals asserted they measured the temperature, which was zero degree Celsius.
AccordingtoIMD,theaverage minimumtemperatureatMahabaleshwar was 10.6 ° C. Most roads to the lake wore a snowwhite look.
Two years ago, Mahabaleshwar witnessed the mercury plunging to one degree Celsius, with similar conditions prevailing in the area. According to the IMD, the current fall in temperature across the state is a result of snowing in J&K and Himachal Pradesh. IMD forecast says the minimum temperature will continue to remain the same for the next 24 hours. JAMMU: After remaining closed for around 48 hours, the 300-km Jammu-Srinagar national highway (NH) was made partially operational for movement since Sunday morning with improvement in weather conditions.
However, the air link to Valley, which too was shut for the last couple of days, was fully restored on Sunday.
Snowfall coupled with heavy downpour since Friday morning caused roadblocks and also triggered landslides on various places on the highway, leaving 1,000 odd vehicles stranded.
Nihar Ranjan deputy superintendent of police (DSP) (traffic), Banihal, said “Though there was a mild snowfall around Jawahar tunnel on Sunday, we made the highway accessible for vehicles. HTC