Dust storm, rain plunge Delhi into darkness
New Delhi, June 9: Pitch darkness descended upon the skies of the national capital on Saturday evening when sudden dust storm, with winds gusting up to 96 kmph, barrelled through the national capital on Saturday evening, causing flight diversions, disrupting Delhi Metro services and uprooting trees.
The skies turned dark grey at 5.10 pm and swirling clouds of dust blew through Delhi- NCR, which also received light rains. The change in the weather brought muchneeded respite from the sweltering heat.
According to the met department, 4.5 mm of rainfall was recorded till 8.30 pm in the national capital.
Services on the Red Line and the Blue Line of the Delhi Metro were affected briefly due to snags on a few stretches because of the dust storm. The wind speed touched 96 kmph, according to the Safdarjung observatory.
The high- velocity winds uprooted a number
of trees and disrupted airport operations.
A senior DMRC official said, “Due to sudden dust storm and rain around 5 pm, there were a few cases of track circuit signalling drop reported on Line 1 ( Red Line) and Line 3 ( Blue Line) and external object striking overhead electrification near Janakpuri East.”
“This had no major impact on overall services, except minor regulation of trains on affected stretches. Trains on all lines are running normal otherwise,” he said.
The police received 99 calls about uprooting of trees, 39 calls about fallen poles and 13 calls regarding wall/ roof collapse. Some of the areas from where calls were received included Lutyens’ Delhi, Maharani Bagh, and Moti Nagar.