Hailstorm in Delhi-NCR brings down temperature\, more rains likely at night

Hailstorm in Delhi-NCR, 18 flights diverted from IGI Airport

Western disturbances covered Delhi-NCR on Thursday and brought down temperature in the region.

india Updated: Feb 07, 2019 20:15 IST
A road covered with hailstones at Noida, Sector 82 on February 7.(Twitter/ANI Photo)

Several parts of Delhi-NCR witnessed moderate rainfall and thundershowers with strong winds on Thursday evening. Instances of hailstorm were reported from Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon. The sudden change in wind pattern brought temperature in the region.

The hailstorm hit the Delhi-NCR region under the impact of western disturbances. According to Skymet Weather, the weather condition originated in the southwest of Delhi and is moving towards western Uttar Pradesh.

Airport officials said 14 domestic flights and four international ones were diverted to nearby cities between 6 pm and 7 pm. “In between 6 pm and 7 pm, nine flights were diverted to Jaipur airport. In the same time period, three flights each were diverted to Lucknow airport and Amritsar airport. Two flights were diverted to Varanasi and one flight to Indore in this one-hour period,” the official added, news agency PTI said.

According to another airport official, four out of the nine flights diverted to Jaipur were of Air India. “These four flights of Air India were heading to Delhi from Varanasi, Kathmandu, Dubai and Kabul,” he said.

Temperature in Delhi-NCR is likely to drop further during the night. Heavy rain intensity that was covered Delhi-NCR this evening is likely to return in the next two days.

Delhi skies had largely remained clear over the past two days with the maximum temperature rising to settle at 25 degrees Celsius, which was two notches above the season’s average. The minimum temperature was around 9 degrees Celsius.

However, rain and strong winds failed to improve the air quality in Delhi-NCR significantly. The air quality remained in the “very poor” category in the national capital on Thursday. News agency ANI quoted the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) as saying, “Air quality has not improved significantly as rainfall was not sufficient enough and wind speed was also moderate.”

Rain and hailstorm that lashed the parts of the national capital caught people in a surprise. Twitter is flooded with photos and videos of streets covered in hail. Moments after the shower, people began posting their reactions onto the micro-blogging site, making #DelhiRains trend on Twitter.

First Published: Feb 07, 2019 18:17 IST