ANOTHER SHORT SPELL OF RAIN THROWS TRAFFIC OUT OF GEAR

NEW DELHI: Just a few hours of rain on Thursday led to a now familiar sight in the Capital — waterlogged roads, crawling traffic and long-winded snarls.

In tune with contemporary weather patterns, the city was dry for much of Thursday, except for a three-hour span between 2.30pm and 5.30pm, when the city got a bulk of the day’s 72mm of rain.

Over the last decade, the Capital has been receiving shorter and more intense spells of rain, experts have said, a change in monsoon patterns that is the primary reason behind increasing instances of urban flooding and flash floods in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

Met officials said that there is a forecast of ‘light to moderate’ showers on July 30-31.

Thursday’s spell of rain, which coincided with the peak traffic hours, was enough to bring traffic to a screeching halt on some of the city’s most crucial arterial roads, including ones in ITO, Dhaula Kuan, Pragati Maidan, Sri Aurobindo Marg (below the AIIMS flyover), Barapullah, Signature Bridge, Hari Nagar and Geeta Colony, showed data from the Delhi traffic police.

On social media, commuters laid bare their frustration at the traffic. “There was a heavy traffic jam between AIIMS and Ashram flyover (on the Ring Road). It took around three hours to reach the DND (Delhi-noida-direct Flyway),” tweeted Jagannath Kar, a commuter.

Another commuter, Sonal Maheshwari, tweeted, “What is the problem on the Barapullah flyover? My father is stuck from the last two hours in the same spot. Can someone take action?”

Senior traffic police officers said a large number of personnel were deployed across the city in the evening, but the inundated roads led to vehicles navigating through the water, which in turn led to a cascading effect to other arterial roads.

The rain did, however, keep the city cool on Thursday. The Safdarjung station recorded a maximum temperature of 32.1°C, two degrees below normal, and a minimum of 24°C.