Margalla whiteout: ‘We didn’t even have to go to Murree’

Hills receive snow after five years

ISLAMABAD:

Citizens of Islamabad woke to an unusual sight on Thursday. The Margallas were blanketed with snow. The city received scattered snowfall after a gap of five years.

Social media was flooded with pictures of the hilltops, while the hills themselves saw minor traffic jams as citizens and tourists tried to get to popular tourist spots such as Pir Sohawa and Daman-e-Koh.

The scenes were more reminiscent of Murree, with families, students, and even elderly men seen engaging in snowball fights and building snowpersons.





Ali Akbar, a telecom worker, was building a snowman with his children. He quipped that his wife, who was out of town for work, had been sending him ‘angry’ messages and ‘jealous’ replies to photos he shared of the kids day out with daddy’.

Rizwan and Basma, who grew up in Karachi, said it was a dream come true to see snow. “We didn’t even have to go to Murree!”

The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) said that the westerly wave which is affecting upper parts of the country is likely to continue for the next 18 to 24 hours could cause scattered rain with snowfall on the hills and also areas such as Malakand, Hazara, and Mardan divisions of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, besides rain in upper Punjab, including Rawalpindi and Gujranwala divisions, Islamabad, and the states of Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir. The weather agency also warned of rain-related landslides in vulnerable areas of Malakand, Hazara, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. PMD has predicted cold and dry weather in the rest of the country.



Heavy overnight rain, topped off with a bit of snow, brought a sudden dip in the temperature, just when it seemed winter was over.

The highest rainfall nationwide was 98 mm, recorded in Dir, followed by Islamabad with 65 mm. Malamjabba and Babusar Top got around one metre of snow, while Gallyat, Kaghan, Naran and Murree also saw reasonable snowfall, attracting a large number of tourists, particularly from upper Punjab.

Abrupt rain coupled with snowfall on hills dragged mercury level below minus 4 degree centigrade in Parachinar and Quetta, while  temperature in Gupis, Murree, Dalbandin and Kalam dropped below  minus 3 degree Celsius, similarly in  Kalat, Dir, MalamJabba, Drosh, Nokkundi temperature was recorded  minus 2 degree centigrade.  The minimum and maximum temperature in Islamabad was recorded 5 and 11 degree centigrade in Islamabad and Rawalpindi on Thursday.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th,  2016