For those who expected the weekend to be another two days of basking in the sun on a wintry afternoon, Saturday came as a freezing blow. With the temperature dipping down to 6.5 degrees Celsius, two degrees below normal, the city experienced the coldest day of the season. The maximum temperature too was three degrees below normal at 21.1 degrees Celsius and, if the MET department is to be believed, the situation might get worse over the next two days.

The fact that the mercury fell down by over five degrees in one day, from 11.7 degrees on Friday to 6.5 degrees on Saturday, caught a lot of people by surprise. Several Delhiites complained of being greeted with a sudden chill when they got out of their blankets in the morning with some even complaining of getting a cold due to this.

The misty morning, the sun’s hide-and-seek throughout the day and an icy wind added to the discomfort of the citizens, particularly of the elderly and the children, most of whose schools were open. The situation was even worse for bikers who had to get to work in the morning with the chilly winds biting into their flesh.

At the same time there were some people who were not complaining about the chilly weather as, according to them, this set the stage perfectly for them to get their winter clothes out. But the general opinion was that of unhappiness. The marriage season seems to have made matters worse with several women contemplating how they would wear their designer lehengas and sarees if the weather continued to be this harsh.

While the western disturbance had been blamed for the rain a few days back, this time it is the north-westerly winds that are playing spoilt sport and will continue to do so over the weekend, according to the weatherman. It was snowing heavily in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir which was causing the icy cold winds from these hilly regions to blow towards Delhi.

However, providing some respite to the air passengers, the meteorological department has ruled out the possibility of fog, an annual nightmare for pilots taking off or coming in to land at the Delhi airport during winter.