Over 180 Trees Collapse, Cause Outages During Thunderstorm

Experts Cite 3 Converging Weather Systems

- Paras Singh

Paras Singh [e-mail] NEW DELHI: Intense thunderstorms and rainfall on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday laid bare authorities' "pre-monsoon preparedness" plans, with usual waterlogging hot spots—Minto Bridge, Azadpur, ITO, airport approach and Zakhira—severely inundated with knee-deep water on arterial stretches and waist-high water in underpasses.

As Delhi was battered overnight, flights were disrupted, trees and electricity poles were uprooted, and roads filled with water were a common sight. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Delhi received 81.22mm of rainfall—classified as "very heavy" and certainly unusual for May—between 11.30pm on Saturday and 5.30am on Sunday. Gust winds of 82 kilometres per hour speed also stormed through the city, as per IMD data.

No hot-spot resolution A PWD official, on condition of anonymity, said that more than 117 waterlogging-related complaints were received by the control room, but several of these pertained to other agencies and some were overlapping complaints related to the same site.

According to the official, the prominent waterlogged spots included the Minto Bridge, Zakhira Underpass, Ashok Vihar Underpass, Mashuban Chowk Underpass, Dhaula Kuan Ring Road towards Naraina, roads near the New Delhi Railway Station, and the Majnu Ka Tila Outer Ring Road section, among others.

Several of these sites have been earmarked as "waterlogging hot spots", where the PWD vowed to have undertaken multiple corrective measures. However, scenes from early Sunday depicted a vastly different picture.

Visuals from Delhi's Minto Road show a car submerged due to severe waterlogging caused by heavy rainfall. This was not an isolated incident, as a bus and a car were also submerged in a flooded underpass near the Delhi Cantonment, close to Manekshaw Centre. A highlighted waterlogging hot spot close to the ITO, near the PWD headquarters, was also inundated.