Unpredicted storms leave 5 dead in Delhi

A violent storm that apparently caught the India Meteorological Department (IMD) unawares lashed Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) early on Friday, killing fivepeople, uprooting hundreds of trees, disrupting flight schedules and deluging the city with the second-heaviest May day showers in 124 years.

The Capital received 77mm of rain during the three-hour downpour, which began around 5am. Within minutes, fierce winds that touched speeds of 80km/hour whipped through the city, bending trees and snapping branches which crashed onto homes and vehicles. Traffic disruptions were reported as commuters tried to navigate through flooded streets and past fallen branches.

A 26-year-old woman and her three children were killed when a tree was uprooted and fell on their house in Najafgarh, said officials. They were identified as Jyoti Devi (26) and her children — Aryan Kumar (7), Rishabh Kumar (5) and Priyansh Kumar (seven months). Her husband Ajay Kumar (30) sustained minor injuries in his chest and wrist.

In Green Park, a 25-year-old construction worker, Ankit Singh, was electrocuted while trying to take cover during the rains. Singh, said police, came in contact with an iron gate which was charged due to a snapped overhead wire.

By 8.30am, Delhi received 77mmof rain, the second highest 24-hour spell of rain in May since 1901. The wettest was May 20, 2021, when the Capital was pummelled by 119.3mmof rain. Residents of cities in NCR were also jolted awake by the squall.

Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta inspected several waterlogged streets, starting with those in Majnu Ka Tila, and said Friday morning’s chaos should “serve as a warning for all departments”.

“Immediate steps are being taken. The rain today should serve as a warning for all departments — if no concrete steps are taken in drain cleaning and road maintenance, the monsoon could lead to a far worse situation,” Gupta said, even as she added that the “previous government handed over a crumbling system”.

Showers were forecast for Friday. But the Met department failed to accurately forecast their magnitude and issue a timely warning.

IMD on Thursday issued a yellow alert for Friday, forecasting thunderstorms with drizzle and gusty winds of up to 50 km/hour. However, at 5am, as the storm gathered pace and began to course through the city, it upgraded the warning to a red alert, warning of a “severe” thunderstorm and winds of 70-80km/hour, said IMD.

“The weather was plenty and it was quite windy when I left for the airport around 4.30am,” said Prakhar Rai. 

“We did issue a forecast for Delhi for a thunderstorm and light rain, along with gusty winds. However, the intensity was marginally higher than anticipated and we saw moderate to heavy rain. During the pre-monsoon period, when temperatures are high, if moisture is fed, the thunderstorm activity can be sudden and intense,” said IMD director general M Mohapatra.

He said the region experienced high temperatures over the past week, adding that it was fed moisture by two sources — the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. For thunderstorms, the atmosphere also needs to be unstable and the approaching western disturbance was the sudden trigger for this.

Friday’s spell of rain gave the city its wettest day so far this year. In fact, it received more rain on Friday morning alone than the 10.2mm it has got all year. It also eclipsed the cumulative average rainfall figure for all of May, which usually receives 30.7mm.

The infamous Minto Bridge, the visual descriptor for Delhi’s flood, was also inundated for around an hour, with officials blocking it off and deploying sixpumps to clear out the road for traffic.

Civil Lines, ITO, Pitampura, Preet Vihar, Moti Bagh, Bhairon Marg, Mathura Road, NH24, and the streets around CGO complex also reported waterlogging.

The thunderstorm and instances of trees being uprooted also led to power outages in the city. Power distribution companies (discoms) said this was primarily due to waterlogging or branches and trees falling on electricity cables. In some cases, power was also switched off to prevent electrocution, discoms said.

Since the rains ended before peak morning traffic hours, the traffic situation remained relatively good. However, the waterlogging even after brief rain may be an indication of the crisis Delhi may face during the monsoon season.

Experts said Delhi is unprepared for handling weather extremes, which can only be mitigated by year-round efforts.

“All-round efforts need to be made rather than crisis management after one rain spell. In public common areas, 100% operational rainwater harvesting has to be a must. It is no longer an option. Local waterlogging is largely because of clogged drains within localities, for which waste management system needs a serious overhaul so that from collection to disposal, waste does not enter drains. Often, even during drain cleaning the sludge is just taken out and kept by the roadside that returns into the drains during rain, clogging the system even more,” said Prerna Mehta, associate director, urban development, WRI India.

She added that apart from the localised efforts, macro steps should also be taken to ensure that the surface water is absorbed as much as possible rather than only getting diverted to drains.

“Delhi has huge parks that can catch surface water runoff. There are lakes and ponds where surface water can be drained so that there is gradual absorption into the ground. Also, while we are concretising large areas, the authorities should look at more use of porous materials that facilitate water absorption,” Mehta added.

For the long term, she said that there has to be planned efforts to revitalise lakes and surface water systems.

A raft of extreme, unexpected weather events have rocked Delhi over the past few years.

In July 2023, for instance, Delhi clocked record rains and floods that caused the Yamuna’s water to swell and spill past the 208m mark.

Floodplains had to be cleared in an emergency and several parts of the city remained inundated for over three days.

Last year as well, Delhi received multiple spells of very heavy unexpected rainfall that led to over 50 deaths during the season due to drowning, electrocution and accidents during storm-like activity.

Most significant was the rainfall on June 28, when 228.1mm was recorded in a single day, submerging the city, shutting down all underpasses, including the Pragati Maidan, tunnel and causing multiple deaths, including one person who died after a canopy portion of the roof fell at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport. This was Delhi’s second-highest rainfall recorded in June since 1901. Delhi recorded excess monthly rain in June, July and August, making waterlogging spells all too frequent. Later, on July 27, three students died of drowning after the basement of a prominent coaching institute for UPSC preparations in Old Rajinder Nagar in central Delhi was flooded with water during the rains.

The area was flooded yet again on Friday, even after drains were cleaned during the year.