Rain brings mercury, pollution down
woke up to a bath-fresh morning on the first day of the week as an overnight rain helped to bring down both the mercury level and the pollution on Monday morning.
To add to the good news, Met officials have predicted that the day temperature would remain much below the 40°C-mark at least till Friday, as another spell of dust storm and thunderstorm is likely to hit Delhi later this week.
“The city received around 7.2 mm of rain till 8.30am on Monday. The day temperature, which had shot up to 43.9°C even on Friday, has dropped to 34°C. This is at least six degrees below that what it should have been,” said an official of the local Met department.
The wet roads, the drenched trees and the moist soil with a few water puddles here and there were a welcome sight for Delhiites who had been baking under the scorching heat till Saturday.
The System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), which maintains the Air Quality Index of Delhi, revealed that the showers also brought down the PM2.5 and PM10 levels from ‘poor’ to ‘moderate’.
“The rain was the combined effect of a western disturbance and a cyclonic circulation over Punjab. Most of the states in northwest India, including Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, received rain,” an official said.
Experts said that such systems that trigger rain and thundershowers at regular intervals during this time of the year help to keep the rising mercury levels under check.
On May 21, a spell of rain had helped bring down the mercury level to around 29.4°C from 39.5°C, within 24 hours. It was the lowest day temperature Delhi had witnessed in the last seven years. “We expect that the day temperature would remain in the range of 37°C-39°C at least over the next few days due to the lingering effect of the rain,” said a senior official.