By The India Meteorological Department has issued a thunderstorm alert for Delhi-NCR, covering Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurugram and Faridabad, with heavy rain and strong winds expected as the monsoon peaks.
The alert warns that low-lying areas of the capital region are likely to see waterlogging as the active weather system passes through.
This kind of weather, thunderstorms with gusty winds, has repeatedly triggered flight delays and airline passenger advisories at Indira Gandhi International Airport during earlier phases of this year’s monsoon.
The IMD additionally warned of landslide and flood risk in Kerala’s Wayanad hills from sustained heavy rain, and winds of around 50 km/h for coastal cities including Kochi, Bengaluru and Mangalore.
Heavy rainfall alerts were also in place for parts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha.
Passengers travelling through Delhi are advised to check flight status directly with their airline and allow extra time to reach the airport while the warning remains active.
Airlines typically advise passengers to check flight status directly through official apps or websites and to allow extra travel time to the airport during active thunderstorm warnings, given the potential for air traffic control-driven delays.
The southwest monsoon typically remains active over North India through August and into early September, meaning further rounds of thunderstorm and heavy-rain alerts affecting Delhi-NCR flight operations remain likely in the coming weeks.
IGI Airport, one of India’s busiest, has repeatedly seen carriers such as IndiGo, Air India and SpiceJet issue passenger advisories during comparable spells of monsoon thunderstorms and high winds earlier this season.
In Kerala, the IMD flagged landslide and flood risks for the Wayanad hills from continuous heavy rain, while Kochi, Bengaluru and Mangalore face coastal winds of around 50 km/h.
Uttar Pradesh cities including Lucknow, Kanpur and Gorakhpur, along with Bihar’s Patna, Gaya and Muzaffarpur, Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal, Indore and Jabalpur, and West Bengal’s Kolkata and Siliguri were also placed under heavy rainfall alerts.
Photo by Quintin Soloviev, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
