Agency areas in freezing cold

Visakhapatnam: The district, particularly the Agency areas, experienced a sudden change in climate with the drop in temperature since Thursday night. People in the Agency area bolted themselves in their houses with firewood burning outside to keep themselves warm. Vehicles were off the roads due to low visibility and normal life was coming to a close in the early evening hours.

Farmers in the tribal areas stopped working in the fields and were keeping themselves busy collecting firewood from the forest. Children and aged persons were the worst sufferers in these extreme climatic conditions. Thick fog was enveloping the entire region and the people were seeing the sun only after 10 am. They were shutting their doors around 3 pm itself with the dense fog descending due to the cold spell.

Araku Valley and Chintapalli recorded seven degrees Celsius, while Lambasingi registered five degrees and Paderu, for the first time, touched a low of three degrees Celsius on Friday morning.

The Cyclone Warning Centre (CWC) officials said that the sudden change in the wind direction, which was now flowing from central India into Bay of Bengal through Andhra and Telangana, had brought down the temperatures. This cold spell could continue for another week, they said.

The port city also witnessed a sudden drop in temperature since Friday morning, forcing people to shop woollen garments. Daily wage earners, most of whom lost their roofs in the recent ‘Hudhud’ cyclone, were spending their time in front of the fire.

However, people in urban areas were enjoying the new weather condition and flocking Lambasingi and Araku Valley in large numbers.

It was likely that the present weather condition could shatter the past records. The lowest temperature of 10.1 degrees Celsius was recorded on January 6, 1962, 11.2 degrees on January 15, 2013, and 12.6 degrees on January 14, 2011.