A young couple and a toddler relax in the sunny greens of Eco Park on Friday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Don’t tweak your weekend plans because of the Friday morning chill. The temperatures — both minimum and maximum — would soar over the next two days.

A cyclonic circulation over Uttarakhand has started obstructing the path of icy winds, triggered by a western disturbance over Afghanistan, from Friday. Weathermen termed the sudden dip in the mercury column and increase in the wind chill factor on Friday as unexpected and attributed it to the Afghanistan disturbance.

“The western disturbance had led to uninterrupted flow of westerly winds from Afghanistan to Arunachal Pradesh. Normally, a cyclonic circulation or similar weather component obstructs westerly winds. But in the absence of any such cyclonic circulation, the wind chill factor rose to an abnormally high level, leading to an unexpected drop in temperature,” said Ashish Sen, director, India Meteorological Department, Patna.

The minimum temperature in the city on Friday morning was 5.6°C — 2.3 notches below normal.

In fact, the entire north Bihar was in the grip of a cold wave on Friday but the Met department did not issue a cold wave alert for Saturday.

Experts of the department claimed that a cyclonic circulation formed over Uttarakhand on Friday would help obstruct the path of westerly wind. This would lead to marginal rise in both minimum and maximum temperatures over the weekend, allowing residents to watch the Republic Day parade at Gandhi Maidan in comparatively comfortable weather.

The Met department has forecast that the minimum temperature on Republic Day would be around 7ºC and the maximum around 20ºC.

“Once the flow of westerly winds from Afghanistan is trapped by the cyclonic circulation over Uttarakhand, then the temperature in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal would not fall further. Instead, the temperature is expected to rise gradually Saturday onwards and the minimum temperature is expected to scale 9ºC by Tuesday,” said Sen.

Citizens, meanwhile, shivered on Friday. “This winter does not seem to get over easily. I almost shivered throughout the day. My daughter is running high fever for a few days. The doctor said she is suffering from viral fever, which is common now owing to the frequent fluctuation in temperature,” said Avinash Kumar, a resident of Boring Road.