From nil to 77 mm, Delhi's wide variance of rainfall at play on Monday

After a weeklong wait, the much-awaited monsoon instalment finally arrived at Delhi on Monday but with a wide ranging variations - from 0 mm to 77.5 mm - at play acrosss it.

While some areas in Delhi NCR - Aya Nagar, Gurugram, Mungeshpur, Noida, Sports Complex near Akshardham, and Mayur Vihar remained bone dry, Palam recorded 'trace', Jafarpur recorded 0.5 mm, Lodhi Road recorded 1 mm while Najafgarh recorded 4 mm rainfall, India Meteorological Department (IMD) data showed.

However, Ridge and nearby Delhi University stations both recorded 11.4 mm rains, Pusa station recorded 25 mm rain, while Pitampura recorded 77.5 mm rainfall, establishing the wide variance of rainfall quantum over various areas of the city state.

"We do not have the capabilities to predict weather events at such high resolution. We are good at long range and even up to five day forecast," said a top official and added, the large variation could be an impact of urban heat island effect.

Earlier, the sky was overcast since morning in several areas across Delhi with almost all of them witnessing a steady rise in temperatures. Safdarjung, the base station for Delhi, registered maximum temperature of 36.9 degrees Celsius while minimum was recorded at 27.1 degrees Celsius. Other Observatories recorded maximum temperatures ranging from 38.9 to 35.9 degrees Celsius.

Incidentally, except for the observatory near Akshardham Sports Complex, all other stations that saw high temperatures, also saw good quantum of rainfall.

The forecast for Tuesday said, there will be generally cloudy sky with light rain/ thundershowers. The maximum and minimum temperature is likely to be 36 and 27 degrees Celsius, respectively.

--IANS

niv/vd