The national capital, Delhi, and its surrounding areas on Saturday witnessed a sudden change in weather, with light rains and dust storms, bringing much-needed respite from scorching heat conditions.

Several areas of Delhi including, RK Puram, India Gate, Pandit Pant Marg, and Munirka witnessed light rainfall with gusty winds.

As many as 22 flights were diverted at the Delhi airport due to the bad weather, PTI quoted an official as saying. Of them, 9 flights were diverted to Jaipur, 8 to Lucknow, 2 to Chandigarh, and 1 each to Varansi, Amritsar and Ahmedabad.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted moderate to heavy rainfall with thunderstorms in many places of Delhi-NCR today.

“Thunderstorm with light to moderate intensity rain with heavy intensity rain over isolated places and gusty winds with speed of 30-50 Km/h would occur over and adjoining areas of entire Delhi and NCR during the next two hours,” the weather agency said in a post on X.

According to the forecast, several areas, including Bahadurgarh, Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad, Jhajjar, Mahendargarh, Sohana, Rewari and others will experience light to moderate intensity rainfall.

IMD said the change was due to the influence of several weather systems, including an intense western disturbance lying as a cyclonic circulation over Iran and neighbourhood. 

The sudden change in weather has brought much-needed respite from the prevailing heatwave conditions over the region for the past few days. Delhi recorded 39.4 degrees Celsius maximum temperature on Friday, the highest since January.

The national capital recorded 39.1 degrees Celsius on April 11, the second highest maximum temperature so far this season. According to IMD data, the maximum temperature in Delhi has been near 40 degrees Celsius for the past four days.

In mid-May and June, harsh summer days are seen when the temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and may even reach 45 degrees Celsius.

(With inputs from agencies)