Our national capital Delhi has been receiving heavy rainfall in the past couple hours. Heavy rainfall coupled with scattered thunderstorms hit the city out of the blue. The city’s air quality is supposed to see an improvement due to the rains. Also, the temperatures are expected to drop.
Kuldeep Srivastava, the regional weather forecast head of the Indian Meteorological Department, mentioned that it is due to the effect of the influence of western disturbances that the capital recorded rainfall with very strong winds for nearly two hours. He estimates that the temperature is likely to drop and reach single digits in the days to follow.
The minimum temperature in the city was 12.8 degrees Celsius while the maximum was 21.5 degrees, two notches below the average. However, Delhi’s air quality index was 429 and was featured in the ‘severe’ category at 4 PM.
Delhi’s relative humidity oscillated from a high of 89% to a low of 75%.
Due to the heavy rains and worsening weather conditions, Air India’s flights have gone to the extent of being diverted and cancelled as well.
North India is also seeing heavy rains and thunderstorms which has been so severe that it triggered a red alert in Uttarakhand.
The weather department has predicted light rain yet high winds in the days approaching which will provide some relief from the polluted air.
The neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan will also be subject to similar weather conditions.
Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh also received heavy rains and storms on Thursday.
The extreme winters and snowfall conditions in Uttarakhand have forced all schools in the areas of Rudraprayag, Chamoli, Uttarkashi and Dehradun to be shut and a red alert has been issued for heavy snowfall in places such as Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag and Chamoli.
Moderate snowfall is evident in the high altitudes of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Gulmarg in JK experienced moderate snowfall whereas Jammu and Srinagar have been experiencing heavy rains since this afternoon. An orange warning has been issued for the two union territories, predicting increased snowfall and rain resulting from the western disturbances that hit the region.
The country’s climate is undergoing major changes which are predicted to worsen and increase in the days to come.
