Light rainfall on Wednesday evening brought much-needed relief to the residents of Delhi and Noida, who have been reeling under heatwave conditions for the last several days. Earlier in the day, a hailstorm hit parts of Delhi, while rainfall was recorded in isolated areas.
People in Rohini, Pitampura and Paschim Vihar reported hailstorms around 2 pm along with a bout of rain and strong winds.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said thunderstorm with light to moderate intensity rain and gusty winds with speed of 30-40 kmph would occur over and adjoining areas of a few places of Delhi (Kanjhawala, Pashchim Vihar, Dwarka, Palam, Safdarjung, Vasant Kunj), NCR (Loni Dehat, Bahadurgarh, Ghaziabad, Chhapraula, Gurugram, Manesar) Narwana, Karnal, Rajaund, Jind, Panipat, Gohana, Gannaur, Meham, Sonipat, Rohtak, Bhiwani, Mattanhail, Jhajjar, Kosali, Rewari, Bawal (Haryana) Gangoh, Deoband, Nazibabad, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Kandhla, Bijnaur, Khatauli, Sakoti Tanda, Hastinapur, Chandpur in the next two hours.
The IMD had earlier issued a yellow alert, warning of a duststorm, thunderstorm or hail storm with winds gusting up to 50 kilometres per hour in the national capital.
It later updated the alert to the orange category.
The Met department uses four colour codes for weather warnings — “green” (no action needed), “yellow” (watch and stay updated), “orange” (be prepared) and “red” (take action).
The maximum temperature at the Safdarjung Observatory, Delhi’s base station, is likely to settle around 38 degrees Celsius.
The minimum temperature was recorded at 28.8 degrees Celsius which was four notches above normal for this time of the year.
As a result of a western disturbance affecting northwest India, a cloudy sky is predicted over the capital for the next three days, the IMD had said.
The mercury is set to rise by four to five notches over the next six days. However, no heatwave is predicted.
