Orange alert withdrawn as rains give Delhi a miss

NEW DELHI: Even as widespread rain, the day before, brought down the mercury in the national capital, the ‘moderate to heavy’ rainfall predicted for Thursday gave the city a miss. The state weather department on Thursday noon withdrew the ‘Orange’ alert it had sounded for the day and issued a ‘Yellow’ alert instead warning of light rain only. Only some parts of the city got very light rain, said officials.

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), on Thursday, Safdarjung, Delhi’s base station did not see any rain. Most other weather stations too did not record any rain till 5.30 pm except for some places in the outskirts including Najafgarh (2.5mm), Pusa (0.5mm), Jafarpur (1 mm) while east Delhi’s Mayur Vihar station received 3.5 mm rain.

This is another instance that the IMD’s forecast has missed the mark. Last month, the IMD kept shifting and withdrawing alerts issues for rain at least four to five times, but there was no or minimal rain. On Wednesday, the weather department had issued an ‘Orange’ alert warning of moderate rain with heavy spells in isolated pockets.

The satellite towns in NCR also did not record any significant rain. “We had issued an alert as the monsoon trough had moved close to Delhi, but it moved further away to other parts of the northwest,” said a senior IMD official. Private weather forecasters too had predicted moderate showers for Delhi-NCR and an even intense spell from July 22-26.