HYDERABAD: City residents were in for a surprise over the weekend, as hazy skies and chilly winds sent them running for their winter gear, with social media memes providing much-needed comfort as the cold season made a sudden comeback.
As days and nights got colder, people gorged on hot meats, with open barbeques and liquor parties the flavour of the weekend.
A city resident claimed to have recorded a temperature of 7.3° Celsius, which put Twitterati on alert, as they rushed to check their thermometers and share the mercury levels in their area.
City resident Ketan Iyengar said that his thermos-hygro clock recorded a temperature of 7.3°C on Sunday morning at the Botanical Garden in Kondapur. “Cold wave strikes as temperature nosedives…. Finally some respite from the warm mornings of past 15 days (sic),” he posted on Twitter.
A Twitter user with the handle ‘The Food Glanzer’ posted a late-night picture of a thermometer showing 12ºC. “Coldest night of the year. Sikh Village Secunderabad. 12-13 degrees,” the user posted.
Another Twitter user, Syed Farzan Qaudri, put up a post around midnight saying, “Now it feels like winter in the city finally!!”
Memes referring to the Delhi weather and freezing cartoons also did the rounds on social media.
Syed Aqif, a clothing store owner in Mallepally, said, “The demand for winter wear has suddenly increased over the past few days as the weather became colder. Sales have gone up and we had to unpack stocks, as people were rushing to buy sweaters and jackets.”
But it was not all joy.
R. Poojitha, a banking professional from Alwal, said, “I work in the late evening shifts from 5.30 pm to 2.30 am. The last few days have been very difficult as it gets cold when I am travelling home.”
“I work as a domestic help and have to reach work at 7 am. Two days ago, I was down with fever. When I returned to work, braving the cold, I fell sick again. Being a daily wage earner, winter is a tough time,” said Razia Begum, a resident of Mehdipatnam.
Officials of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) acknowledged the sharp fall in temperatures, citing the low-level north-easterly winds for the same. The IMD said that cold-wave conditions were very likely to prevail with dry weather for three more days.
For the next 48 hours, it has sounded an orange alert for many districts where the temperature is expected to drop by 4ºC to 10 ºC.
In the city limits, it said that the sky will remain mostly clear, with the mist or haze in the mornings set to continue with surface winds of around 3-6 kmph. The temperature in the city is expected to hover between 12°C and 27°C for the next 48 hours.
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