A dust storm, with winds gusting up to 96 kmph, barrelled through the national capital this evening, causing flight diversions, disrupting Delhi Metro services and uprooting trees.
The skies turned dark grey at 5.10 pm and swirling clouds of dust blew through Delhi-NCR, which also received light rains. The change in the weather brought much-needed respite from the sweltering heat.
According to the MeT department, 4.5 mm of rainfall was recorded till 8.30 pm in the national capital.
Services on the Red Line and the Blue Line of the Delhi Metro were affected briefly due to snags on a few stretches because of the dust storm.
The wind speed touched 96 kmph, according to the Safdarjung observatory.
The high-velocity winds uprooted a number of trees and disrupted airport operations.
"Due to inclement weather in Delhi, 35 flights were diverted to nearby airports. Flights could not be operated at @DelhiAirport from 5PM to 5:57PM.
"Our Delhi ATC managing diversions & bringing back diverted flights in safe, orderly & expeditious manner. Safe flights our prime aim," Airports Authority of India tweeted.
A senior DMRC official said, "Due to sudden dust storm and rain around 5 pm, there were a few cases of track circuit signalling drop reported on Line 1 (Red Line) and Line 3 (Blue Line) and external object striking overhead electrification near Janakpuri East."
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