Daytime chilly conditions to persist in Delhi today: IMD

The maximum temperature is expected to stay around 15 degrees Celsius today, with a ‘yellow alert’ issued by the India Meteorological Department

A day after recording its lowest daytime temperature of the season, Delhiites woke up to yet another cold and grey morning, with the minimum temperature recorded at 7.7 degrees Celsius – one notch above normal.

People warm themselves around a bonfire on a foggy winter morning in New Delhi on Thursday. (Sanjeev Verma/ HT Photo)

The maximum temperature is expected to stay around 15 degrees Celsius today, with a ‘yellow alert’ issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) for cold conditions in parts of the national capital.

The IMD classifies it as a ‘cold’ day when the maximum temperature is 4.5 degrees Celsius or more below normal, with the minimum also being below 10 degrees Celsius.

Safdarjung, which is representative of Delhi’s weather, had recorded a maximum of 15.6 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, the lowest so far this season. This was four degrees below normal, the previous lowest maximum being 15.9 degrees Celsius on December 31.

Though Safdarjung did not meet the ‘cold day’ criteria, several other stations did. Lodhi Road recorded a maximum of 14.6 degrees Celsius, Ridge at 13.6 degrees Celsius, while CDO Ghaziabad, Noida and SPS Mayur Vihar recorded a maximum of 11.5 degrees Celsius, 12.5 degrees Celsius and 12.3 degrees Celsius, respectively. The minimum at all these stations remained below 10 degrees Celsius.

An analysis of ambient temperatures taken every three hours since December 31 also showed that the city is colder than the peak highs suggest, and those figures are likely outlier recordings for when the Sun briefly broke through the thick upper-level fog persisting across northwest India and the Indo-Gangetic Plains over the last few days.

Usually, the peak temperature comes at a point somewhere between 3pm and 4pm. But readings from every three hours, the most frequent temperature recording are made by the IMD, showed the ambient temperature to be in the low double digits (10-11°C) for most parts of the day between 830am and 5.30pm, except for some hours between 2.30pm and 5.30pm.

Three-hour readings from Safdarjung illustrated the rest of the day on Wednesday, except for the brief afternoon window – the temperature was 9.6°C at 8.30 am, 11.2°C at 11.30 am, and 15.2°C at 2.30 pm before it began to drop again, plummeting to 13.8°C at 5.30 pm.

At the surface level, shallow fog persisted on Thursday, with the lowest visibility recorded at 500m. Though no flights were impacted at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport, at least 26 trains were running at a delay of over 1 hour, the Northern Railway said.

Meanwhile, Delhi’s air quality remained in the ‘very poor’ category, deteriorating in comparison to Wednesday. The average AQI was recorded at 370 (very poor) at 9am on Thursday. It was 341 (very poor) at 4pm on Wednesday.

Forecasts by the Early Warning System (EWS) for Delhi – a forecasting model under the ministry of earth sciences, said Delhi’s air quality should remain ‘very poor’ till January 6.