Dry Sunday: Monsoon is here, but rain isn't

New Delhi: The drenching rain that Delhi has waited for stayed away another day, while humidity caused the "feel-like" temperature to soar to 46.8 degrees Celsius at 4pm.

A few areas recorded very light rain on Sunday. Najafgarh got moderate showers of 19mm.

Delhi's air quality remained ‘satisfactory' for the eleventh straight day.

A partially clouded sky brought the temperature down by a bit, but the sweaty stickiness that has sat on the city went nowhere.

The Met office had issued a yellow alert for moderate rain on Sunday. However, no such weather activity was recorded across the city until late in the evening. A similar yellow alert was issued for Monday too, and the IMD expects more rain as the monsoon trough is now over Delhi.

Between 8:30am and 5:30pm, the city's base station at Safdarjung recorded 0.8mm rainfall. Mungeshpur got 0.5mm, Rajghat 0.1mm, Palam only a trace of rainfall, and Lodhi Road 1.5mm.

The IMD said that the monsoon trough was directly over Delhi on Sunday and was passing over Suratgarh, Sirsa, Delhi, Lucknow, Varanasi, Daltonganj, Bankura, Digha, and the Bay of Bengal. "Light to moderate showers are likely on Monday too. A yellow alert has been issued. We can expect some rain activity overnight too," an IMD official said.

Though no colour-coded alerts are in place from Tuesday onwards, the IMD has still forecast light rain till at least Saturday. "Light rain is expected until tomorrow. Patchy, moderate showers are expected between July 8 and 10, particularly during the early morning and late afternoon," said Mahesh Palawat, vice-chairperson for climate change and meteorology at Skymet.

Weatherman Navdeep Dahiya said on X: "We will see active monsoon conditions in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, UP, MP, north Rajasthan, and Chandigarh this coming week." Widespread overnight and early morning showers, including heavy spells, were likely to impact several cities, including Delhi. "Afternoon and evening showers will be scattered (hit or miss)..." the post said, adding that in some places across northwest India, 50mm to 150mm of rainfall is likely in a single spell too.

The IMD declared the onset of the southwest monsoon on June 29 — two days after its normal date. So far this month, only 5.9mm has been logged. Normally, Delhi sees 209.7mm in July. Last year, 203.7mm was recorded in July.

The city's base station at Safdarjung recorded 35 degrees Celsius, two degrees below normal. The IMD expects the maximum temperature to hover around 32-34 degrees Celsius on Monday. The minimum temperature is expected to hover around 25-27 degrees Celsius.

Delhi is in the middle of its cleanest spell of air this year. The average air quality index (AQI) was 75 on Sunday.