The current trend of short, intense, and widely spaced rains continued in Delhi on Sunday, with rainfall ranging from 27.6mm to 126.8mm recorded at various weather stations across the city within a few morning hours.
Kuldeep Srivastava, IMD’s head of regional weather forecasting centre, said, “More showers are expected over the next couple of days. Given that August, when the city receives maximum rainfall, is still left, we may have a slightly above normal monsoon this year.” He added that there is a forecast of heavy rains in Delhi and NCR on Monday.
Since August 2020, the city has broken a weather record every month. For example, this February was the second warmest in 120 years, with a mean maximum temperature of 27.9 degrees Celsius (°C), just missing the all-time high of 29.7 degrees set in 2006.
Then, on March 29, this year, the hottest day in 76 years occurred, with temperatures reaching 40.1°C.
After a scorching February and March, the weather turned around in April, with the lowest minimum temperature in at least a decade recorded on April 4, at 11.7°C.
July 2021 continued the trend of breaking records: it began with an unusually hot day with a maximum temperature of 43°C. Four heatwave days occurred over the next eight days, a frequency not seen since 2014. The monsoon should have arrived around this time, but it didn’t until nearly the middle of the month, on July 13, the latest onset since 2013. And all of this happened in the space of three years.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Safdarjung weather station, which provides representative data for the city, received 28.2mm of rain on Sunday, while Lodi Road received 27.4mm and Palam received 29.6 mm. However, 126.8mm of rain was recorded at Ridge weather station, which is located in the heart of the city.
Similarly, 100mm of rain fell in three hours between 5.30am and 8.30am last week on Tuesday, the heaviest rain of the season so far.
Then, between 2.30 and 5.30 p.m. on Friday, the Safdarjung observatory received the majority of the 41.6 mm rainfall. However, showers were more intense just 2 kilometres away on Lodi Road, with the weather service recording over 62mm of rain. Similarly, while Safdarjung and Lodi Road received 72mm and 73.4mm of rain after a heavy downpour on Thursday, the area around southwest Delhi’s Palam observatory remained completely dry.
Severe waterlogging was also reported in Yamuna Bazar, Khanpur, Rohtak Road, Lodhi Road, Azadpur underpass, Zakhira underpass, Shakti Nagar underpass, Kirari, and Sagarpur, according to the PWD.
