Record rain in Delhi floods airport, orange alert issued

Gulf Today Report

Delhi and its adjoining areas received heavy rainfall on Saturday as parts of the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi have been waterlogged. An 'orange alert' has been issued as the monsoon rainfall in Delhi breached the 1,000mm mark on Friday, the highest rainfall in 46 years.

At 7.20am, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) tweeted, "Thunderstorm with moderate to heavy intensity rain and gusty winds would continue to occur over and adjoining areas of many places of Delhi, NCR (Bahadurgarh, Gurugram, Manesar, Faridabad, Ballabhgarh, Loni Dehat, Hindon AF Station)."

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The IMD uses four colour codes for weather alerts: green, yellow, orange and red. Green meaning everything is fine (no warning), yellow warning of disruption in daily activities (be aware). An orange alert, on the other hand, is for extremely bad weather (be prepared/updated) while red indicates extremely bad weather conditions (most vigil/take action).

In addition to Delhi, the IMD also projected moderate to heavy intensity rain in parts of Haryana, while parts of Uttar Pradesh would receive showers of light to moderate intensity.

The monsoon rainfall in Delhi breached the 1,000mm mark on Friday, the highest rainfall in 46 years.

There was major traffic disruption on roads due to water logging in South Delhi area around the IGI airport.

The Delhi Traffic Police tweeted alerts: "Traffic is heavy due to water logging at GGR/PDR. Kindly Avoid the Stretch.

"Water logging near WHO on Ring Road. Kindly Avoid the Stretch," just after 11am.

The Safdarjung observatory received 5.4mm of rainfall in 24 hours, with 10.2mm of rianfall recorded between 5.30pm and 8.30pm on Friday, pushing the figure to 1,015.5 mm-mark for the first time since 2010.

The national capital received 1,031.5mm rain between June and September 2021.

According to MeT officials, with the rain forecast for the weekend, Delhi could beat the record in September itself.

In comparison to this year, Delhi received 576.5mm of rainfall in 2020 monsoon season and 404.3mm in 2019, according to IANS.

The annual rainfall received so far this year is 1,215.9mm now, as opposed to a normal annual mark of 779mm from January to December.

The Air Quality Index is settled at 79 — in 'satisfactory' category, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) data.