Delhi temp just 4.4 deg shy of world record set in 1913

New Delhi: If you are in Delhi-NCR and it felt like your skin was sizzling on Wednesday afternoon or thought it was the hottest it has ever been, you were not wrong. The national capital recorded its highest-ever temperature of 52.3 degrees Celsius, just 4.4 degrees shy of the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth: 56.7 degrees Celsius at the Greenland Ranch in California's Death Valley.

The ranch is now aptly called the Furnace Creek Ranch. According to data from IMD, the Mungeshpur weather station in northwest Delhi recorded the temperature-bulb-shattering number at 2.30 pm. At 51 degrees Celsius, the previous highest temperature in India was recorded in Rajasthan's Phalodi in 2016.

This was followed by 50.8 degrees in Churu, also in the desert state, in 2019 and 50.6 degrees in Alwar in 1956. The world's highest temperature, according to the Guinness World Records, was recorded on July 10, 1913. There is some dispute about the number, though, and if the current record is decertified - like the figure of 57.8 degrees Celsius recorded in Libya in 1922 - then the next highest figure will be 54 degrees, just 1.7 degrees higher than Delhi's temperature on Wednesday.