Delhi: Moisture-laden clouds bring respite after ten-day lull

NEW DELHI: After a ten-day-long dry spell since the monsoon was declared to have arrived in the national capital, a highly-localised cloud formation led to intense spells of rain in parts of the city on Monday, said weather officials. The change in weather was caused by moisture in the atmosphere 
following rain in neighbouring states a day ago, said the officials.

On Monday, while base station Safdarjung received just 1 mm rainfall, other weather stations including Pitampura got 77.5 mm, Pusa 25 mm, Ridge and Delhi University each got 11.4 mm, Najafgarh 4 mm and Jafarpur 0.5 mm.

Officials in the IMD said that this isolated rainfall was a result of a highly-localised activity. Only patchy rains are likely in Delhi over the whole week, as the monsoon trough is not in the northwest region but away in central India seeing heavy rainfall activity. 

Mahesh Palawat, vice-president, Skymet, a private weather forecaster said that even though these isolated spells were monsoon showers, they are not widespread since the monsoon trough is in the south of Central India. “It was mainly because of the moisture in the atmosphere caused by rainfall in Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, which led to the formation of patchy thunder clouds in a highly localised activity in parts of Delhi that resulted in only parts of the city getting rain while some receiving less than 5 mm rain,” said Palawat. 

He said that this is more or less going to be the pattern of rain for Delhi till July 19-20 when the axis of the monsoon trough is likely to come back to the Indo-Gangetic plains. “At present, intermittent easterly winds and southwesterly and the moisture formed in the atmosphere due to rainfall in neighbouring states. There will be a mix of winds and humidity till July 19-20,” he said. 

Since Delhi received 119.2 mm rainfall between June 30 and July 1 when monsoon arrived, there has been only 2-3 mm rainfall in the city, which has been reeling under high levels of humidity and soaring mercury.