NEW DELHI: The maximum temperature in the national capital Sunday evening settled at 34.9 degrees Celsius, a notch below-average temperature, with a possibility of light rain on Monday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
It was a pleasant Sunday morning in Delhi with the minimum temperature settling at 27.5 degrees Celsius, it said. The relative humidity oscillated between 89 per cent and 66 per cent. The weatherman has predicted generally cloudy skies with the possibility of very light rain with drizzle on Monday.
The monsoon embraced the national capital in an impressive manner on June 30 but rains have repeatedly given the capital a miss since then, with IMD struggling to make accurate predictions. Though experts acknowledged that providing accurate localised forecasts is a complex process, they said the central weather forecasting agency cannot be off the mark repeatedly.
The Safdarjung Observatory, Delhi’s primary weather station, has recorded just 2.6 mm of rainfall in the last 10 days. It has gauged 144.3 mm of rainfall against a normal of 126.7 mm since June 1, when the monsoon season starts. Of this, 117.2 mm came in just 24 hours ending at 8:30 am on July 1 this year.
After the season’s first spell of heavy rain on June 30-July 1, the IMD issued an orange alert, warning of moderate rainfall in the city on July 1. A yellow alert was issued for light rain over the next six days.
While just 2 mm of rainfall occurred in the next three days (July 1-July 3), the Met office on July 4 issued a yellow alert for July 5 and an orange alert for July 6, which was later shifted to July 7. While Delhi kept waiting for rain, experts attributed the dry spell to the shifting of the monsoon trough towards central India due to the development of a low-pressure area over Odisha which subsequently travelled to Gujarat.
“The low-pressure area had pulled the trough towards central India, leading to heavy rainfall there,” said Mahesh Palawat, vice president (meteorology and climate change), Skymet Weather.