Evening rain helps keep Delhi cool

HT Correspondent letters@hindustantimes

HT Correspondent

Commuters in the rain near Connaught Place in Delhi on Tuesday. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi: The northern parts of the national capital received heavy rain on Tuesday evening with officials from the India Meteorological Department calling it a “highly localized heavy rainfall event”. Heavy rainfall was recorded in the Ridge area while some parts saw moderate rainfall even as rain nearly skipped the southern part of the city.

While the (IMD)’s Safdarjung observatory, Delhi’s base weather station, recorded no rainfall between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm on Tuesday, the weather station at ridge and DU recorded heavy rain. Out of the 12 weather stations in Delhi, seven stations did not record any rainfall while one station, Najafgarh, recorded 9.5mm of rain. The weather stations at Lodhi road and Aya Nagar received drizzle, IMD officials said.

“Highly localized heavy rainfall events over Delhi ridge area and adjoining Delhi University area occurred just around ridge area between 3:45 till 5:30 pm on Tuesday. The event was observed over an area where IMD has two observatories just within 3km distance to each other, that is, IMD Ridge synoptic-Manual and IMD DU-AWS-Automatic stations, both of which have recorded 87.0 and 83.5mm respectively,” said IMD scientist RK Jenamani and head of IMD’s regional weather forecasting centre.

Jenamani said that event took place on account of moisture-laden easterly winds and the western disturbance. “It was due to lower level moisture-laden easterly/southeasterly winds reaching up to Delhi NCR in association with the low-pressure area over north-west Bay and presence of Western Disturbance as a trough in mid-troposphere westerlies around 65 degrees long /28 degrees latitude. Due to these systems moderate to intense rainfall also occurred over Uttarakhand and UP,” said Jenamani.

The weather department classifies daily rainfall between ‘trace’ and 2.4mm as “very light”, between 2.5mm and 15.5mm as “light”, between 15.6mm and 64.4mm as ”moderate”, and over 64.5mm as “heavy” rainfall.

The maximum temperature on Tuesday was 34.7°C, while the minimum was 24.6°C. According to IMD’s weekly forecast, the maximum temperature is expected to hover around 32°C on Wednesday while the minimum may touch 24°C. A generally cloudy sky is expected on Wednesday with the possibility of moderate rain and thundershowers, the forecast said.

The air quality on Tuesday stayed in the “moderate” category with an air quality index (AQI) reading of 130. The AQI stood at 182 in the “moderate” category on Monday.

An AQI between zero and 50 is considered “good“, 51 and 100 “satisfactory“, 101 and 200 “moderate“, 201 and 300 “poor“, 301 and 400 “very poor“, and 401 and 500 “severe“.

On Tuesday, the Union ministry of earth science’s air quality monitoring centre, System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (Safar), said the air quality is expected to be in the moderate category till Friday.

“For the next three days ( Wednesday to Friday), peak wind speed is likely to be around 10-12 km/hour causing moderate dispersion of pollutants and AQI is likely to be within “moderate” category due to trace rainfall spells,” Safar said.