The New Year brought slight respite from the biting cold wave conditions prevailing in north India for the past few days, even though fog continued to disrupt road and rail traffic.
However,rains in Madhya Pradesh led to dip in temperature and claimed the life of a 55-year-old man in Rajgarh district.
Also in Uttar Pradesh's Lalitpur district, a 30-year-old man died due to cold.
Delhiites woke up to a pleasant morning with the minimum temperature settling at 8.8 degrees Celsius, a notch above normal while the maximum temperature settled at 21.6 degrees Celsius, a notch above the season's average, allowing people to come out and enjoy the day.
Flight operations at the Indira Gandhi airport here were smooth, though as many as services of 58 trains were affected in the region, which witnessed moderate fog.
According to a Northern Railway official, "as many as 36 trains were running behind the schedule, 15 cancelled and seven of them rescheduled".
In the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, light rains occurred at some places and minimum temperatures rose in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Agra Varanasi, Faizabad, Bareilly, Jhansi and Meerut divisions.
Meanwhile, mercury plummeted in Kashmir Valley today after a slight respite for few days, dropping further below the freezing point with Kargil recording a new low of minus 15.8 degrees Celsius this season.
The MeT officials said that the Pahalgam resort in south Kashmir, which serves as a base-camp for the annual Amarnath yatra, registered a minimum temperature of minus 7.2 degrees Celsius, a down by almost four degrees from the previous night's minus 3.5 degrees Celsius.
The minimum temperature in the famous ski-resort of Gulmarg settled at minus 3.4 degrees Celsius, slightly down from the previous night's minus 3.2 degrees Celsius.
Gulmarg was the centre of the New Year celebrations in the Valley with tourists and locals thronging the resort for the annual event which marks the advent of the new year amid snow.
However, there was some disappointment as there has been no fresh snowfall since December 23.
In the desert state of Rajasthan, night temperature increased marginally in various parts of the state bringing some respite from the cold even though the movement of trains was affected to due to foggy conditions.
