NEW DELHI: After experiencing a cold northern wind throughout the day on Thursday, the national Capital is likely to see a further drop in both minimum and maximum temperatures on Saturday, the weatherman said. The air quality of Delhi remained poor on Friday.
The maximum temperature on Thursday was recorded at 19.1 degrees Celsius, four notches below the season's average, while the minimum temperature stood at 11.2 degrees.
According to officials of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the minimum temperature on Friday was around 9 degrees Celsius and the maximum was around 19 degrees.
"There will be shallow fog with the slight drop in temperature," an IMD official said.
The humidity on Thursday, however, dropped helping the air quality to slightly improve despite low wind speed. "At 5.30 pm, the relative humidity was 49.4 per cent. The wind speed was 1.1 mps," the official added.
Meanwhile, the air quality index (AQI) at 4 pm on Thursday was recorded at 265 units, against 270 on Wednesday: both values labelled under the 'poor' category and on the verge of getting 'very poor'.
However, the average air quality of Delhi-NCR was "very poor", according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) real-time estimation based on pollutant concentration.
Level of major pollutant PM2.5 across Delhi at 8 pm on Thursday was 138 units, and across NCR it was 134 units – over five times the international safe limits.
According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research, Lodhi Road, Dhirpur and Delhi University saw PM2.5 levels of over 300 units.