Delhi, NCR wakes up to rain on Sunday, air quality expected to improve marginally

New Delhi : Residents in Delhi on Sunday woke up to a cloudy day with light to moderate intensity showers in several parts of the city and NCR and the national capital territory, which is expected to marginally improve the air quality index over the next few days.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had forecast rain in the city from around 5 am and it predicted that isolated places across the Capital would see light rain/drizzle “during the next two hours.”

According to the forecast by the weather body the city will have generally cloudy sky and moderate rain today. Light rains are also predicted on Monday.

Rain lashes Delhi-NCR; visuals from NH-24 in East Vinod Nagar area

“Thunderstorms with light to moderate intensity rain would continue to occur over & adjoining areas of many places of entire Delhi and Noida during the next 2 hours,” says India Meteorological Department pic.twitter.com/gkvltUvyxs

— ANI (@ANI) October 17, 2021

On Saturday, the minimum temperature in Delhi was recorded at 20 degrees Celsius, at Safdarjang which is the city’s base station. The maximum temperature was recorded at 35.5 degrees Celsius, three degrees above normal.

Meanwhile, the Air Quality Index in the national capital slipped to ‘Very Poor’ category and PM 2.5 is back as the lead pollutant, reported System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR) on Saturday.

“Favorable meteorological conditions lead to intrusion of stubble burning related air mass. With 1572 effective fire counts as per SAFAR harmonized methodology which includes data of two ISRO satellites, the stubble burning contribution in Delhi’s air has suddenly increased to 14 per cent,” SAFAR added.

The air quality is likely to improve in the next three days as per SAFAR. “Under the influence of approaching western disturbance, wind reversal to easterly will happen by tomorrow and rainfall is likely and AQI is forecasted to improve but will remain in poor for tomorrow but thereafter it is likely to be moderate for the next three days,” the forecasting body said.