Today, Delhi is anticipated to maintain a maximum temperature of around 15 degrees Celsius, as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issues a ‘yellow alert’ for cold conditions in certain areas of the national capital. Following the recording of the season’s lowest daytime temperature yesterday, Delhi residents awoke to yet another cold and overcast morning, with the minimum temperature registering at 7.7 degrees Celsius—just one degree above the norm.
The IMD categorizes a day as ‘cold’ when the maximum temperature is 4.5 degrees Celsius or more below normal, and the minimum temperature is also below 10 degrees Celsius. Safdarjung, considered representative of Delhi’s weather, marked a maximum of 15.6 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, the lowest this season and four degrees below the normal. While Safdarjung didn’t meet the ‘cold day’ criteria, other stations like Lodhi Road, Ridge, CDO Ghaziabad, Noida, and SPS Mayur Vihar did. They recorded maximum temperatures ranging from 11.5 to 14.6 degrees Celsius, with minimums below 10 degrees Celsius.
Furthermore, an analysis of ambient temperatures recorded every three hours since December 31 revealed that the city is colder than peak highs suggest. The frequent temperature recordings from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm show ambient temperatures in the low double digits (10-11°C) for most of the day, except for some hours between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm.
Despite shallow fog persisting at the surface level on Thursday, with the lowest visibility at 500m, there were no flight disruptions at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport. However, over 26 trains were running with a delay of over 1 hour, according to the Northern Railway. Delhi’s air quality, categorized as ‘very poor,’ worsened compared to Wednesday, with an average AQI of 370 at 9 am on Thursday, up from 341 at 4 pm the previous day. Forecasts from the Early Warning System (EWS) for Delhi, a forecasting model under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, suggest that Delhi’s air quality is expected to remain ‘very poor’ until January 6.
