Rajpath reverberated with 21 gun salute to the President of India amid a chant of National Anthem to mark the beginning of festivities on the 72nd Republic Day of India. Magnificent parade with a splendid and thrilling climax of a flypast by the Indian Air Force was the real joy of the crowd. The display of eye-catching presentations by the children was equally heartwarming and full of applause.
26th January 2021 happened to be the coldest in the last 21 years (since 2000). Base observatory of Delhi, Safdarjung recorded a minimum temperature of 2.1°C, 7°C below the normal. January happens to be the coldest month of the year with an average minimum of about 7°C. In these last 21 years, the single-digit minimum was recorded on 17 occasions and in the rest 4 went up to even low teens. On these 4 occasions, the highest temperature of 13.6°C was measured on 26th January 2017 and followed by 13.2°C (2009), 12.1°C (2002) and 11.8°C (2000). Only on 3 occasions, the mercury dipped below 5°C: 4.8°C (2006), 4.1°C (2008) and 2.1°C (2021).
With the coldest Republic Day, Delhi goes on record to have the highest number of cold wave days (05) when the temperature dropped to 4°or less in the month of January since last 8 years. During this month so far the respective minimum temperature was 1.1°C (01 Jan), 3.2°C (02 Jan), 3.2°C (13 Jan), 2.0°C (14 Jan) and 2.1°C (26 Jan). Prior to this in the year 2013, there were 6 cold wave days when the mercury slumped to 4°C or less.
No substantial relief is expected from the cold conditions in the national capital during the night and early morning. However, the day conditions are likely to be better with dense fog lasting only for a short duration and facilitating a fair amount of sunshine abating cold day conditions. No rainfall is expected during this month and the dry days will even extend to the 1st week of February.
