Delhi witnessed severe overnight rains on Thursday, which led to the flooding of many areas of the nation’s capital, uprooted trees, caused immense chaos on roads and even resulted in the collapse of a structure, with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) issuing a red alert for more showers in the city.
Video footage and pictures around the city showed vehicles struggling to drive in flooded streets, people walking in knee-deep water, trees fallen across important roads, and long lines of vehicles queuing up in important roads. In some areas, the roads were almost like streams due to incessant rains that flooded the city.
The worst tragedy was reported in Rohini, where a four-storey building under construction collapsed amidst the heavy rain, killing three people. According to the IMD, Delhi's base weather station at Safdarjung recorded 72.6 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours ending at 8:30 am. During the same period, the figures for Lodhi Road, Ridge, Palam, and Ayanagar were 80.2mm, 77.8mm, 63mm, and 57.4mm respectively.
Water logging took place in various parts of the city like Sadar Bazar, Greater Kailash, Badarpur, Nasirpur, Teliwara, Mahavir Bazar, Swarup Nagar, Kushak Road, Munirka, Dwarka, Vikas Marg, East Delhi, and the New Delhi Railway Station area. Traffic got affected severely due to water logging on many arterial roads such as Ring Road, Outer Ring Road, Delhi-Noida Expressway, and National Highway-48 around Dhaula Kuan, Mahipalpur, and Rajokri.
The relentless downpour also brought down trees across parts of the capital, adding to the disruption. Two trees were uprooted in East of Kailash — one near the ISKCON temple and another outside the National Heart Institute — briefly blocking roads and disrupting traffic, though no injuries were reported in either incident. The civic bodies of Delhi got many complaints regarding waterlogging, falling of trees, and electricity failures as the emergency crews worked on clearing the roads.
The consequences of the storm were not limited only to the national capital but also to its neighbouring city Gurugram, where the flooded roads resulted in traffic snarls on the Delhi Jaipur Highway in the areas of Narsinghpur, Basai, Umang Bhardwaj Chowk, Kadipur, Sector 10A, and Sohna Road.
As per the IMD, the cause of the rains in the region for the last two days was the northward shift of the seasonal monsoon trough in the direction of the Himalayan foothills. The weather department has said that it is expected that heavy rains will continue in Delhi till the monsoon trough shifts further north. Even though it rained heavily, the air quality in Delhi remained satisfactory, with an AQI of 61.
Also read: Floods, gridlock & landslides: Rain hits hard from North to South
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