A snow-covered cottage in Darjeeling on Sunday morning. Picture by Suman Tamang

Darjeeling, Jan. 27: A sun-bathed morning when you could look up to catch a sight of the glistening Mt Kanchenjunga was followed by the winter’s first snowfall in Darjeeling last night, capping a perfect Republic Day in the hills.

It all began with a brief shower around five in the evening that brought down the temperature but no one had any inkling of the events to follow until the first snowflakes were reported from Tiger Hill, at 8,497ft, around 8.30pm.

By 10 at night, despite the temperature hovering between two and three degrees Celsius, the snowflakes were floating down on Darjeeling, at 7,001ft, bringing people out on to the streets.

Though the accompanying rain washed most parts of downtown Darjeeling clean, snow-chasers trekked uphill to the outskirts this morning to leave their footprints on the white carpet.

Places like Dali, Jalapahar, Ghoom, Jorebuglow and the Three Mile area were covered in four inches of snow till 11am.

“Unlike Valentine’s Day last year, we could not have a snow-fight at Chowrastha, but it was just a matter of travelling a couple of kilometres to the upper reaches of the town to find some snow,” said Samridhi Pandey, a student of Mount Hermon.

Call it coincidence, but over the past few years, snowfall in Darjeeling has mostly occurred on important days on the calendar. It snowed here on January 1 in 2003, January 23 (Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s birthday) in 2005, Valentine’s Day last year and Republic Day this time round (see chart).

“It was a pleasant surprise,” said Clive Daw, who has come to Darjeeling from Perth, Australia. “Back home it’s summer and very hot, but it was nice to see people here enjoy the snow.”

Daw will be here for a few more days. A number of tourists who were supposed to leave Darjeeling today have also decided to stay back.

The snow also prompted people from other areas of the hills to head for Darjeeling. “We couldn’t afford to miss this sight,” said Prabhat Gurung, a schoolteacher from Kalimpong who came here with his friends.

It also snowed in the upper reaches of Sonada, around 20km from Darjeeling. The temperature in certain parts of Sikkim, including Nathu-la and the areas above Chhnagu Lake, plummeted to below 0 degree Celsius today and was accompanied by snowfall.

Gangtok recorded a minimum temperature of three degrees Celsius. The upper ridges of the hills surrounding the capital were covered in about 2 inches of snow.

M. Das, an assistant meteorologist at the Gangtok Met office, said cyclonic circulations over Bangladesh (1.5-2.1km above sea-level) and eastern India (1.5km above sea-level) were responsible for the snow and the rain. The trough of the western disturbance at 900m above sea-level was another contributing factor, Das said.