Minimum temperature has again fallen below normal in Delhi after a brief hiatus, with the mercury on Friday settling at 4.2 degrees Celsius, which is three degrees below normal for this time of the year.
The maximum temperature was 18.6 degrees Celsius, which was also three degrees below normal. In the morning, fog lowered visibility to 350 metres at Safdarjung and Palam.
For Saturday, the Met Department has forecast a partly cloudy sky with moderate to dense fog in the morning and strong surface winds during the day.
The maximum and minimum temperatures will be around 20 and 7 degrees Celsius respectively. Under the influence of a Western Disturbance, the sky is likely to be cloudy over the weekend that will keep temperatures in check and then fall thereafter.
The air quality of Delhi, Noida, and Gurugram deteriorated to the “very poor” category on Friday, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data.
The national capital’s air quality is expected to improve in the coming days.
“Due to better ventilation condition, AQI is forecast to marginally improve on January 23 and 24, but will stay in the ‘very poor’ category. The middle end of the ‘very poor’ category is forecast for January 25,” said a statement by the government-run monitoring agency SAFAR.
Also, the speed of surface-level winds was “moderate”, which aided in lesser accumulation of pollutants near the surface. However, the “mixing layer height”, which is the height from the ground level up to which pollutants can be dispersed, was “low”.
