Parts of Delhi-NCR lashed with heavy rain, flights diverted

After witnessing a pleasant weather through the day, Delhi was lashed with heavy rains, strong winds on Monday evening. The effect is likely to spill onto Tuesday as the weather office has predicted drizzle to light rain for the national capital.

Parts of Delhi witnessed heavy rains, accompanied by strong winds on Monday evening due to a fresh western disturbance influencing the region with the city's maximum temperature settling at 27.1 degrees Celsius, three notches below the season's average.

Delhi-NCR soaked in rain, accompanied by strong winds on Monday evening. (Sunil Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

Visuals from Shahjahan road, Vikaspuri and other places in Delhi-NCR showed vehicles, people travelling wet soaked as rain lashed the national capital, where earlier in the day, pleasant weather conditions prevailed.

The minimum temperature of Delhi today was noted at 17.4 degrees Celsius, a notch above normal, while the humidity levels oscillated between 48 and 94 percent. The air quality also remained ‘moderate’ as per 4 pm’s recording, noted at 154.

Commuters out in the rain on the Sector 12 road, in Noida, Up, on Monday. (Sunil Ghosh / Hindustan Times)

With this change in weather, the government's air quality forecast agency SAFAR has also forecast ‘moderate’ air quality levels for Delhi in the week ahead. A moderate Air Quality Index (AQI) is recorded when the air quality remains within 101 and 200.

"Overall air quality is likely to be within 'moderate' or 'upper end of satisfactory' for the next three days due to moderate dispersion by surface wind speed as well as wash out by likely rain spells," it said.

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'.

Visuals from Shahjahan Road, central New Delhi, Monday. (ANI)

The ‘bad’ weather conditions also prompted the Delhi airport to divert as many as 10 flights to other airports, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said. While seven flights were diverted to Jaipur, another three to Lucknow.

For Tuesday, the India Meteorological Department has predicted generally cloudy skies with the possibility of very light rain or drizzle.

(With inputs from agencies)