A Kashmiri woman warms herself with a kangri firepot on a houseboat in Srinagar yesterday. Snowfall and rain lashed North India for a second day yesterday, triggering landslides and cutting off parts of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and flooding roads in Delhi.

IANS/New Delhi

Snowfall and rain lashed North India for a second day yesterday, triggering landslides and cutting off parts of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and flooding roads in Delhi.

The national capital received the heaviest rainfall of the winter season since Monday, breaking a six-year-old record, at 46mm. Delhi’s Ridge at 50mm, Delhi University northern campus at 51mm and Lodhi Road at 53.6mm were the wettest spots in the capital, and gave commuters a harrowing time as many key roads were waterlogged.

The minimum temperature in the capital was recorded at 13.5 degrees Celsius and the maximum was 19.3 degrees.

The heavy rain brought down the level of air pollution in Delhi, a scientist said.

According to him, the air in Delhi currently is the cleanest in the past two months and will continue to be so this week.

Analysis of Delhi’s air quality by the Ministry Of Earth Sciences’ Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) found that the level of harmful suspended particulate matter in the air was within the permissible limit.

“Delhi is finally out of poor air quality after two months. Delhi’s air is going to be much better during the next three days due to rain and comparatively high temperature,” Gufran Beig, a scientist at IITM, said.

“For the first time since November 2012, Delhi citizens are going to breathe relatively cleaner air for next three days,” said Beig.

Data obtained by the System of Air quality Forecasting and Research (SAFAR) - India’s first air quality prediction system consisting of eight automatic air quality monitoring stations - projected a sharp fall in particulate matters PM2.5 (fine particulate matters of size less than 2.5 micrometres).

“The level of particulate matters PM2.5 is predicted to fall sharply below 60 microgram/cubic metre during the next two days compared to last week’s value of 200 microgram/cubic metre, during which the air quality was poor,” he said.

In Himachal Pradesh, the situation was worse as piles of snow blocked traffic on road to towns in Shimla, Kullu and Kinnaur districts. The heavy snowfall and rain will continue today too, the weather office said.

Traffic beyond Kufri, a hill station near Shimla, was suspended after a stretch of Hindustan-Tibet Road was closed due to heavy snow. Connectivity on Kullu-Manali national highway snapped 5km ahead of Manali.

Kalpa in Kinnaur experienced 54.7cm of snowfall and mercury dipped to minus 3.4 degrees Celsius while the minimum temperature in Manali was 1.2 degrees below the freezing point.

Further north, the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway No1A, the lifeline to the Kashmir Valley, remained closed for the second day due to overnight snowfall and landslides. Hundreds of trucks and passenger vehicles were stranded.

A Border Roads Organisation official said the piled up snow blocked the road in the Banihal sector while landslides hit the road in Panthal, Seri and Kela Morh areas.

He said the stranded vehicles would be allowed to move on from Jammu to Srinagar if the weather improves.

There were about 200 people stranded at Jammu bus stand due to the closure of the highway.

Almost all mountainous parts of the Jammu region too remained cut off. The 100km stretch between Patnitop and Banihal had over a dozen blockades caused by snow, landslides and shooting stones.

Police said they have given food and shelter to stranded passengers who could be reached while police units were trying to access those who are cut off. Even telecom links and electricity supply were disrupted.

The number of pilgrims visiting the Vaishno Devi hill shrine also fell drastically to about 5,000, from 8,500 on Monday, a Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board official said.

The snowfall in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh brought on heavy rains and strong winds in the plains of Haryana and Punjab.

In Haryana, Narnaul and Karnal received 30 and 23.8mm of rain respectively. Rain was also reported in Ambala and Hisar.

In Punjab, Patiala received 13.6mm of rain. Amritsar and Ludhiana also had showers.

Chandigarh received 11.5mm of rain until yesterday morning. The rain was accompanied by high velocity winds.

Incessant rain also brought back winter chill in Uttar Pradesh. The weather department forecast more showers.