Patna schools up to class 8 closed till January 11 due to cold
Classes for grades 9 and above will proceed between 9 am and 3:30 pm, with board exam activities exempted from the order.
The Patna district administration has prohibited till January 11 academic activities till class 8 in all private and government schools due to prevalent cold weather and low temperature, said Chandra Shekhar Singh, Patna’s district magistrate (DM), in an order issued on Sunday.
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Classes from 9 onwards will continue between 9am and 3.30pm. However, academic activities related to board examinations have been exempted from the purview of the order, the DM said.
Singh had on January 1 prohibited academic activities before 9am and after 4pm at all private and government schools.
Cold conditions prevailed in Bihar with Motihari recording 6.7 degree Centigrade, the state’s lowest minimum temperature on Sunday, amidst dense fog in the morning in north-western, central and south Bihar districts, according to the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) weather bulletin released Sunday afternoon.
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Patna recorded a minimum temperature of 10 degree Centigrade on Sunday, a drop of 0.5 degree Centigrade over the last 24 hours, while its maximum temperature was 14 degree Centigrade on Saturday.
Patna’s minimum temperature, which was 7 degrees Centigrade on January 1 had, however, risen by 3 degrees Centigrade on Sunday. On the contrary, its maximum temperature, which was 15 degrees Centigrade on January 1, had fallen by 1 degree Centigrade on Saturday.
But on Sunday, Patna’s maximum temperature rose to 16.3 degrees Centigrade.
The little difference in the minimum and maximum temperature during the day made the cold conditions oppressive, as Patnaites continued to shiver, said the weatherman.
Motihari, with a minimum temperature of 6.7 degrees Centigrade, Chapra 6.9, and Dehri 7.0, were colder than Patna, while Muzaffarpur recorded a minimum temperature of 11.2 degrees Centigrade. The five cities showed a decline in minimum temperature of 0.2 to 1 degree Centigrade over the last 24 hours.
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Most other places in the state recorded a rise in the minimum and maximum temperature, with Kishanganj recording a maximum temperature of 26.5 degree Centigrade on Sunday.
The IMD said Patna and Motihari recorded cold days, while Vaishali, Nalanda and Samastipur recorded extremely cold days. It predicted that cold days and dense fog will prevail over the next two days.
The dense fog led to poor visibility, affecting flights from Patna, as two were cancelled and as many as six delayed on Sunday. The minimum visibility dropped to 150 metres at 5.30am on Sunday at Patna airport, when Delhi airport reported 0 visibility.
IndiGo’s 6E 5104 and SpiceJet’s SG8721, both from Delhi to Patna, were the two flights cancelled on Sunday morning.
Air India’s AI 897 from New Delhi, which had a scheduled arrival time of 10am, was the first flight to land at Patna at 12.43pm, late by 2.43 hours on Sunday. Five other flights, including those from Bengaluru, Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad were also delayed by 13 minutes to 3.24 hours, as per information sourced from Patna airport.
The Met predicted that there will not be any significant change in the temperature over the next two days. There may, however, be a drop in the minimum temperature after that.
