HCMC’s temperature drops to 19 degrees Celsius on Christmas

Motorbike drivers in HCMC had to cover themselves in warm clothes while many street vendors sat huddled up due to the cold.

“It is much colder than usual this morning,” a banh mi vendor named Sang, 39, said.

The Southern Hydrometeorological Center said the lowest temperature measured in HCMC on Saturday morning was 19 degrees Celsius, recorded at the station in Tan Binh District.

In other part of the southern region, the morning temperature was 18 degrees in Binh Phuoc Province, 18.5 degrees in Binh Duong, 14.5 in Dong Nai and between 19 and 21 in the Mekong Delta.

Le Thi Xuan Lan, deputy head of the center, said the temperatures in HCMC on Saturday morning were 1-2 degrees lower than some cold periods that the city had experienced this month.

“It is rare this year when the cold weather came to the city exactly on Christmas holiday. The city was usually hot during this occasion in previous years,” she said.

She said from now until the Lunar New Year holiday, which will arrive in more than three weeks, the city will experience at least three more cold periods, with the next one expected to come on December 29 when the temperatures will drop even lower.

HCMC’s lowest temperature on record was on December 25, 1999, when it dropped to 16.4 degrees.