New Delhi: Despite overcast skies and a drizzle-like atmosphere lingering over the city, the much-anticipated monsoon continues to elude Delhi.
With the India Meteorological Department (IMD) repeatedly issuing yellow alerts and predicting the monsoon’s arrival over the past few days, residents continue to wait as the forecasts have yet to materialise.
In its Wednesday bulletin, the IMD stated that the monsoon was likely to cover Delhi within the next 24 hours (by Thursday).
Meanwhile, on Thursday, in reference to Wednesday’s prediction, the weather department said that cloudy conditions had prevailed over the city for the past
three to four days.
However, only very light to light rainfall occurred at a few places in the region. The IMD added that Delhi experienced persistent southeasterly winds during this period due to an east-west seasonal trough and a convergence line running to the south of the city, up to about 2 km above surface level.
As a result, there was consistent moisture incursion into the city, leading to low to medium clouds and scattered light to very light rainfall. However, the mid- and upper-level wind and circulation patterns were dominated by an anticyclonic circulation/ridge over the region, which inhibited the advance of the
monsoon towards Delhi.
The same pattern was observed over southwest Uttar Pradesh and adjoining areas of Haryana and Rajasthan, the IMD said.
This pattern, however, is likely to change over the next three to four days with the northward movement of the seasonal east-west trough and the weakening of the mid- and upper-level anticyclonic circulation and ridge over the region, it added.
Typically, the southwest monsoon reaches the city around June 30.
In comparison, the monsoon reached Delhi on June 28 last year, June 25 in 2023, June 30 in 2022, and July 13 in 2021.
Delhi recorded a maximum temperature of 38°C on Thursday, 2.3 degrees below the seasonal average, while the minimum was 28.6°C, 0.7 degrees above normal. Humidity stood at 74 per cent at 5.30 pm. The IMD has forecast thunderstorm with rain for Friday. Delhi’s AQI was 94 at 6 pm, in the ‘satisfactory’ category.