Wintry sunshine in Nainital beckons people from fog-wrapped, shivering plains
Monday, 15 January 2024 | PNS | NAINITAL
In latest news from Uttarakhand, the sun is now shining bright on Nainital while the people in the plains keep shivering in the bone-chilling cold and reeling under the fog-caused poor visibility. And this is why, tourists in their hordes from across the country are now thronging this hill station. “We were suffering the insufferable cold in Delhi for the past fortnight. As there was no sun we had to gather around fire to beat the freezing cold. In nights, heaters were the only means of mitigating the suffering. So we decided to ascend to Nainital. Here we are enjoying the bright sunshine all through the daytime. Even the fog was less dense here than what we were encountering in Delhi,” said Surendra from Delhi who came with his whole family to spend a week in the famed lake town.
Quizzed on why things are different in the hills and the plains during the winter-peak, an environment scientist at Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIOS), Narendra Singh ascribed it to climate changes caused by air pollution in the plains. “The volume of pollution increases in winter. Organic particles, dispersed in the atmosphere, cannot rise and so stagnate in a limited height due to excessive moisture and this is what causes fog. The winter ordeal in the plains will continue till it rains accompanied with strong winds,” he said.
Sounding happy over the significant surge in the tourist footfalls, the president of the Nainital Hotel and Restaurant Association Digvijay Singh Bisht said that the freezing cold coupled with the fog-generated visibility problem in the plains has been prodding the people from there to ascend to Nainital which, though cold, is blessed with bright sunshine in the day.
