“Winter up north is very severe this year. And it’s the northerly winds that continue blowing into the city,” said a weather official.

He said a severe cold wave had gripped Jammu, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Saurashtra and Kutch due to western disturbances. According to IMD forecast, the chill is likely to continue till Tuesday with the mercury hovering around 10 degrees Celsius.

On Sunday, the minimum temperature was 14.8 and 10.2 degrees Celsius in Colaba and Santa Cruz, respectively. The maximum temperatures too plummeted to 27.3 and 26.6 degrees and the humidity dipped to an all-time-low of 56 and 36 per cent, respectively. Incidentally, these statistics make the city colder than the extreme weather of Nagpur, which recorded 27.4 and 11.1 degrees Celsius on Sunday.

And as the temperatures dropped, smog hung low on Mumbai’s streets. “You have to literally wade through a black lace curtain of smog in the early hours,” T Maringanti, an Andheri resident and regular late-night commuter on the Western Express Highway, said.