Central Delhi receives 'heavy' rainfall for 3rd straight day

New Delhi, July 30 (IANS) Large parts of the national capital continued to receive 'good' rainfall with central Delhi receiving 'heavy' rainfall for the third day in a row on Friday.

The Safdarjung observatory, which recorded 72 mm rainfall for 24 hours ending 8:30 am on Friday, received 41.6 mm rainfall between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm, data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) showed.

Right next door, the Lodi Road observatory that had captured 74 mm rainfall till 8:30 am, recorded 62 mm rainfall between 2:30 pm and 5:30 pm.

The Ridge and Aya Nagar had received 56.8 mm and 34.8 mm rainfall till 8:30 am, respectively, though these stations and many other areas of Delhi received almost nil rainfall during the day.

Explaining why Safdarjung recorded 42 mm rainfall while Lodhi Road, which is less than 2 km away, recorded 62 mm rainfall on Friday afternoon, R.K. Jenamani, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Forecasting Centre of the IMD here, said that though these two places are just within 2-3 km aerial distance, rainfall does vary within even a kilometre.

"Today afternoon at the Lodhi road area, clouds suddenly built up from east with already favourable synoptic systems. Then it got further feeding from in-situ conditions, depending on local land use land cover (LULC) changes, which also impact the weather," he said, adding, "In the absence of winds, such organised and highly local convection provides such restricted localised high rainfall."

On Thursday, a similar phenomenon had taken place but on a little wider scale. The intense rainfall in the afternoon was similar to Friday's event, covering the Safdarjung airport, Lodi Road and even South Ex areas, which received 72-73 mm rainfall, though there was almost zero rainfall in R.K. Puram to Palam side.