HYDERABAD: If weathermen's forecast comes true, today could be the coldest January day Hyderabadis would have woken up to in 68 years.

According to the forecast, the minimum temperature of the day is likely to drop to as low as 8 degrees Celsius on Sunday. The last time the city shivered in such biting cold, sources say, was in 1946 when mercury levels dropped to a bone-chilling 6.1 degrees on January 8 that year. Since then, barring brief spells of chill, winter hasn't been so harsh in the City of Pearls, weathermen said.

Over the past decade, temperatures in Hyderabad, during the month of January, have hovered at between 14.8 degrees (in 2012) and 8.3 degrees (2009).

While confirming that Sunday, in all probability, could be the "chilliest day in a very long time", Narasimha Rao, assistant meteorologist, attributed the likely steep fall in temperature to the "winds blowing towards the state from the Bay of Bengal". "It is also be because of the severe cold wave conditions prevailing in the north of India that the cities down south are getting chilly," he added. On Saturday, Hyderabad recorded a minimum temperature of 10 degrees Celsius.

In fact, over the past few days, Met officials said temperatures have been dropping by two-three degrees every day. "On January 7, the minimum temperature was 15 degrees, which dropped to 12 degrees the next day. Going by this trend, we predict that the temperature on Sunday will dip to 8 degrees from 10 degrees recorded on Saturday," Rao said.

Predictably then, the Telangana Met department has issued a warning to all the 10 districts that "severe cold wave conditions would prevail over some parts of the state over the next few days." "As per our forecast, this weather condition will continue till January 15, following which the mercury levels will once again rise to around 10 degrees," said Y K Reddy, director in-charge of the Met station, Hyderabad.

Adilabad, however, continues to be the coldest among the lot consistently recording very low temperatures. On December 20, 2014, the district witnessed its coldest day of the season as the temperature dropped to an unusual 4 degrees Celsius leaving its residents freezing.