Tourists who are in Mussoorie hoping to see snowfall have sounded disappointed as the acme of the winter season has

remained elusive for the Queen of Hills so far this season. Even during the last winter snowfall had eluded the famed hill station, though a few flakes fell sporadically then.

The tourists were hopeful particularly in view of the recent weather forecast of likely snow/rain in the high altitude areas of the State.

While a large swathe of such areas in several districts of the State got covered under a thick blanket of snow on Friday and Saturdayit remained out of bounds for  Mussoorie to the utter disappointment of the residents and those  who thronged it in pleasurable anticipation of the hill station turning white.

Dehradun residents who had expected snow  in Mussorrie were disappointed  too. Even rain did not happen here as forecast by the weather department. The sky was overcast for the better part of the day on Friday.  

Ramesh Semwal, Jakhan resident, said that following Met department’s forecast of heavy to heavy snowfall across Uttarakhand,  they had all expected Mussoorie to experience  the season’s maiden snowfall.

“Had it happened we would have rushed there to enjoy it. However, nature has left us disappointed. Vagaries of nature  betrayed us last winter too,” he  added.      Aman Thapa, a hotelier based  in Mussoorie, said that the hotel owners and shopkeepers who look up to snowfall to earn easy bucks as the hill station sees huge  footfalls during  such periods  are   disappointed.

The Meterological officials said that higher reaches had experienced  light snowfall on Saturday too. “Munsiyari, Uttarkashi, Joshimath, Auli andsome other places in Chamoli, Kedarnath and Champawat received snowfall on Saturday.

While 16 mm rainfall was reported in Munsiyari 8mm was reported from Uttarkashi, 16 mm  from Tyuni, 1 mm from  Nainital, 0.4 mm from Mukteshwar, 0.2 mm from Pantnagar and 1.3 mm from Tehri over the past 24 hours on Saturday,” said the Meterological director Bikram Singh. 

He said Dehradun would remain dry  on Sunday. The sky would be clear, he said, adding that   dry weather would prevail across Uttarakhand too. The maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to be around 25ºC and 07 ºC respectively in Dehradun on Sunday, he stated.

Singh further informed that the maximum and minimum temperatures were recorded at 25.9 ºC and 10.5ºC in Dehradun while it was 15.2ºC and 4.6ºC in Tehri, 16.1ºC and 4.3ºC in Mukteshwar and 25.6ºC and 11.6ºC in Pantnagar on Saturday.