A woman walks with a toddler wearing woollens at Patna zoo on Thursday afternoon. Picture by Jai Prakash

The perceptible nip in the air and shallow fog early in the morning have heralded the onset of winter in the city amid a shadow of a depression in the Bay of Bengal, which has the potential of developing into a cyclone. Weathermen are claiming that under the depression’s influence, sea wind would cause moisture incursion towards land and obstruct the northerly wind from the Himalayan range as a result of which the onset of winter might be delayed in the region by a couple of days. Piyush Kumar Tripathi of The Telegraph prepares a curtain raiser on how to cope with the transitional phase and beyond for a chilly season.

Nip in the air

Though a nip in the air is being felt, winter has still not officially set in the city. The minimum temperature is hovering in the range of 16 to 17 degrees Celsius since the past couple of days, whereas meteorology needs it to remain below 13 degrees Celsius for at least a week for winter season to officially set in at a place.

Ashish Sen, director, Patna meteorological centre, claimed that the onset of winter is expected to be delayed in eastern India, including Bihar. “The onset of winter depends a lot on western disturbances but all of these weather systems formed in the recent weeks have passed from upper latitude crossing through place like Punjab, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir among others. Also, the wind direction is changing from north-easterly to northerly, which would raise the temperature by a degree over the next two days. Thus, it is almost certain that winter would not set in before third week of November in Bihar,” said Sen.

The winter has been officially setting in around the first week of December since the past two years and it is at its peak normally between December 20 and January 10.