GURUGRAM: Residents experienced a sudden change in weather on Friday afternoon as skies turned cloudy and strong winds along with dust started blowing across the city. The wind speed was between 30-50 kmph at some places in the city.
Despite the strong winds and trace rainfall towards the late afternoon, the maximum temperature soared to 38.7 degrees Celsius from 33.8 degrees on the previous day, but it was still three notches below the season’s normal. The minimum temperature climbed by three degrees from Thursday’s 22.5 to 25.5 degrees Celsius — a notch below normal. The relative humidity index oscillated between 52% and 68% throughout the day.
According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the east-west trough from north Rajasthan to Odisha now runs from northwest Rajasthan to south Bihar across south Haryana and south Uttar Pradesh and a western disturbance as a cyclonic circulation over Iran and adjoining Afghanistan led to gusty winds and isolated rainfall in southern parts of Haryana on Friday.
“With active western disturbance over western Himalayan region some rainfall is expected over north Haryana on Saturday. While the chances of rain are less for south Haryana but partly cloudy condition with a possibility of some thundery development can be witnessed over the next two days. Due to rain earlier this week, we have not seen a significant rise in temperature across the state. However, it will rise gradually by 2-3 degrees over the three days with no heatwave condition for the next five days,” said Manmohan Singh, director, IMD Chandigarh.
The city’s air quality index deteriorated to poor category on Friday. The overall AQI reading was at 226 as compared to 180 on Thursday. Three of the four monitoring stations including Gwalpahari, sector 51 and Teri Gram recorded ‘poor’ AQI with readings of 249, 243 and 240 respectively. While it was in moderate category at Vikas Sadan with an AQI of 172.
Meanwhile, Delhi recorded a rise in maximum temperature by over three degrees on Friday with the meteorological department expecting mercury to soar further. According to IMD, the maximum temperature is set to cross 40 degrees Celsius on Saturday.
