KATHMANDU: The Kathmandu Valley witnessed the coldest day of the year with mercury dipping to the season's lowest at 0 °C, as recorded by the Meteorological Forecasting Division (MFD) at 3:00 am on Thursday morning.

According to the MFD official, Samir Shrestha, "The mercury has steadily dropped for the last couple of weeks due to north westerly wind. It is not unusual in the winter.''

Clouds of pollution preventing sunlight from reaching the ground have also been blamed for the extremely cold weather, the MFD stated further.

As per the MFD, sunrise today was recorded at 6:52 am and sunset is predicted for 5:15 pm respectively. It also records 100 per cent relative humidity in Kathmandu for today.

Meanwhile, the temperature recorded by the MFD in Kathmandu at 8:45 am is 2.5 °C and the expected temperature for the day is around 15 °C-17 °C.

The lowest minimum temperature recorded in the country remains at -8.4 °C in Jumla.

The minimum and maximum temperatures of the Capital on Wednesday was settled at 0.9 °C and 16 °C respectively.

The extreme minimum temperature recorded in the valley last year was 1.4 °C.

The lowest minimum temperature that the MFD recorded was on December 31, 1977 with mercury plummeting to -2 °C.