Heavy rain hits Delhi, flight operations, traffic affected

New Delhi: Heavy rain has hit Delhi, resulting in operations at the city airport being suspended for nearly half an hour this evening.

The downpour has also resulted in crawling traffic, with many on the road as Durga Puja festivities have begun.

"Operations remained suspended between 7:56 pm to 8:22 pm at Indira Gandhi International Airport due to heavy rains," news agency ANI tweeted.

Vistara Airlines too cautioned that the rain might hit arrivals and departures at the Delhi airport.

Private weather forecasting agency Skymet had forecast rain for Punjab, Uttarakhand, Haryana and other parts of North India. The rain also brought down the temperature.

Delighted and surprised, citizens took to Twitter to share pictures and videos of the rain. "No predictions, no warnings. There you have it, the unpredictable mother nature," one Twitter user wrote. This season, Delhi received its lowest rainfall since 2014, the weather office said on Wednesday.

Delhi witnessed surplus rainfall in the last two years -- 770.6 mm in 2018 and 672.3 mm in 2017.

The weather office had recorded 524.1 mm precipitation in 2016 against the long-term average of 648.9 mm and 515.3 mm in 2015. The city had gauged 370.8 mm rainfall in 2014, news agency PTI reported.

In June this year, Delhi recorded just 11.2 mm rainfall against the normal of 65.5 mm -- a deficiency of 83 per cent.

The next month, it recorded a rain deficiency of 24 per cent, registering 210.4 mm rainfall against the mean of 276.1 mm.