Dust storms
Apart from traffic snarls, 15 flights, including two international ones, were diverted because of bad weather, airport officials in Delhi said. Railway traffic was also affected, with about 50 trains delayed, railway officials said.
The weather department predicted more thunderstorms in parts of north and central India in the next two days. The hill regions of Himachal Pradesh and Uttararkhand may experience hailstorms.the intensity of the storms may be much less than the Wednesday night’s chain of storms, the India Meteorological Department said in a statement.
Climate scientists attributed an increase in the frequency of storms to climate changes stemming from global warming, caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
“Thunderstorms, flash floods and heat waves are likely to increase in future and their intensity will be more visible in northern India. This is also mentioned in the fifth assessment report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Venkatesh Dutta, an associate professor in the department of environmental science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU), Lucknow. sive formation of cumulonimbus clouds all along the coast. Since both phenomena occurred at the same time, it resulted in such a high number of lightning strikes in coastal Andhra,” Krishna added. By Thursday, the trough had spread from middle Maharashtra up to South Tamil Nadu, even parts of Karnataka. “This is causing dusty thunder storms and lightning along the region, especially in parts of Telangana including Hyderabad,” Krishna said, adding that the trough will continue in the region from midMaharashtra to south Tamil Nadu for the next two days.
S Kishan, in charge of the State Emergency Operation Centre, said such thunderstorms and lightning strikes are not uncommon during April, May and June. “Especially during pre-monsoon season, such situations arise. This time, the number of lightning strike is unusually high due to extension of cloud cover over a vast area all along the coast, which is very rare,” he said.
Justice Misra responded by saying that the Centre should have stuck to the court’s deadline. “We gave time to the Centre to come up with a scheme. If that is not ready, Karnataka must release water as per the tribunal order.”
Reacting to the court’s order, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said: “I am yet to get full details on the issue. But where is the water to release? I will discuss with our legal experts on the next course of action.”
In Tamil Nadu, DMK leader M K Stalin has threatened to launch a ”bigger, longer protest” if the Centre continued to delay constituting a Cauvery Management Board.