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Delhi

Dust storm brings mercury down in capital

A dust storm hit several parts of the national capital Saturday evening and brought the temperature down marginally on a hot, sunny day which saw the maximum temperature of 40.8 degrees Celsius, said the weather office.

An India Meteorological Department (IMD) official said the storm, with maximum wind velocity of 42 kmph, remained stable only for about two minutes.

'The storm hit the capital around 8 pm and remained for a couple of minutes,' said the official. As it raised thick clouds of dust, the storm caused serious problems for pedestrians and motorists. Praveen, a motorcyclist, said that he had to stop his bike due to low visibility during the storm. 'I was unable to see for five minutes till the storm eased a little,' said Arpit Goswami, a sales executive.

The temperature marginally came down from 35.6 degrees Celsius around 8 p.m. to 35.1 degrees Celsius around 9.30 p.m.

Earlier in the day, the capital recorded the maximum temperature of 40.8 degrees Celsius, a notch above what is the average for this time of the season.

'The day's minimum temperature was three notches above average at 29 degrees Celsius,' said the IMD official. The humidity levels wavered between a high of 40 and a low of 16 per cent.

According to the IMD, Delhi will get no relief from the hot weather Sunday, as no rains were likely. The skies, however, will remain partly cloudy. The maximum and minimum temperatures are expected to hover around 43 and 29 degrees Celsius, respectively.


'POWERLESS' DELHIITES SWEAT IT OUT

On Saturday, Delhiites were left sweating in the scorching heat due to massive power cut in various parts of the city.

According to power regulator, city received 1,400 MW less power on Saturday due to a technical glitch in various power plants in the city that has resulted in low production.

Areas across east, west, north and south Delhi faced outages in the range of one to four hours due to power shortage. The maximum power demand remained above 4,200 MW. 'The supply of power to Delhi fell by 1,400 MW due to various technical issues in some of the power plants from where we get electricity,' said a power department official. According to him, the low supply was complicated further when western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana overdrew from the grid.

The supply from NTPC's Dadri plant in Uttar Pradesh came down by 800 MW while the Bawana plant in the city, which produces around 250 MW, was non-functional. Power production at NTPC's Rihan plant in Uttar Pradesh as well as in Badarpur Thermal Power Ltd in Delhi was also severely affected resulting in shortage in supply. According to the officials of NTPC, the situation would improve by Sunday. Meanwhile, power demand in the city remained high at 4,278 MW which was however, less than Friday's 4,490 MW.

'There was no power in our area for four hours,' said N N Mishra, a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase- II. The erratic power supply also affected various water treatment plants in the city, resulting in shortage of water supply.
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