Thundershowers hit Delhi but capital yet to cover rain deficit

Thundershower and gust with speed up to 70 km per hour hit Delhi on Monday afternoon, forcing the diversion of two flights to Lucknow.

The weather brought down temperature from around 34°C to 25°C with a span of few minutes. The India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) Safdarjung observatory recorded 29.2mm rain till 8:30 pm. At Palam, it was 26.5 mm.

The IMD has forecast that there could be light rain over the next two days.

While the rain brought relief to citizens, the capital was 75% rain deficient till July 14. There was only 38 mm rainfall in the period June 1 to July 14. The mean rainfall in June in the last 10 years is 82.2mm and 187.3 mm in July.

Delhi and surrounding areas were in “severely dry” category as per India Meteorological Department (IMD) Pune’s standard precipitation index data for the season released on July 10.

Experts said it was very unusual to see such large deficiency in mid-July.

“Deficiency may reduce a little bit in the next few days. But we are seeing almost all of south Haryana, south Punjab and Delhi-NCR highly deficient this year. It’s unusual. I think it’s a combination of factors like a delay in monsoon onset and then break monsoon conditions set in when the trough shifted to the Himalayan foothills. This is usually not seen in July, it’s often seen in August,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice president, climate change and meteorology, Skymet Weather.

“Monsoon onset in Delhi was with very light rain on July 5. There was no rain bearing system after that. In the last 2-3 days monsoon trough was over the foothills. Now we may get some showers or thunder activity for 3 to 4 days,” said K Sathi Devi, head of national weather forecasting centre at IMD.

According to IMD’s Monday bulletin, the monsoon has advanced to parts of Haryana and Punjab. The monsoon trough had moved to the Himalayan foothills for the past one week. It rained heavily in the northeastern states, sub-Himalayan West Bengal, northern Bihar, some parts of Uttar Pradesh during the past one week. But now the trough is moving back towards northwest India which leading to rains and thundershowers in parts of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Chandigarh, while rains gradually dissipate in the foothills.

Overall, there were good rains in July in other parts of the country particularly central India and northeastern states. The rainfall deficiency fell from 33% on June 30 to 12.5% on June 14.

But according to private met forecaster, Skymet Weather, rains across the country are going to reduce now. The countrywide rainfall deficiency rose to 13% on Monday.

“Due to weakening weather activity across the country there may be a further shortfall in rainfall amounts. The Northern Limit of Monsoon also hasn’t moved since July 10. Only a few places in East India, foothills, Northeast India and Konkan and Goa will observe rain, while the remaining parts of the country will witness almost dry conditions. Central and Northwest India will be the worst hit,” Skymet Weather said in their press release.

Apart from northwest India which has a deficiency of 10% on Monday, Peninsular region has a deficiency of 28%.

First Published: Jul 16, 2019 05:14 IST