Dust storm from Gulf leaves Mumbai, adjoining areas in haze; see pics

The city woke up to hazy weather and dust-laden winds on Sunday morning. Hazy, cloudy skies were reported over Mumbai, Pune, north Maharashtra and adjoining districts in Gujarat since Sunday morning and will prevail until early Monday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has warned.

Visibility in several places in and around Mumbai too was low on Sunday morning. Windy conditions, too, were reported from these regions. A dust storm originating in the Gulf area and Karachi, Pakistan, towards Rajasthan and neighbouring Gujarat, coupled with warmer temperatures in areas along the Arabian sea including Mumbai has led to sand particles entering and polluting the air.

“A moderately high dust storm originated from the Gulf area on Saturday evening. The temperature there was warm, leading to the lifting of dust in the air. The weather is cooler in India, hence the dust storm will not sustain for long. However, the temperature in the western parts of India, including parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat towards the Arabian Sea was warmer, which made it favourable for storms to enter the country. This led to storms polluting the air quality of the regional belt, including areas between Mumbai and Pune and beyond. The Air Quality Index in some areas, which had improved to satisfactory, has now dropped to ‘poor’, ‘very poor’ and some stations even recorded an AQI in the ‘severe’ category. The maximum impact will be seen in areas close to the Arabian sea. But this will be short-lived,” said Dr Gufran Beig, founder and project director of System Air Quality Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

“Mumbai witnessed an unusual dust cover throughout Sunday. Blowing dust-laden winds from the northwest, that is from Iran through Balochistan and Sindh coast and the UAE, brought in dust particles towards Gujarat & North Konkan (including Mumbai). This dust cover enveloped the city with haze and resulted in a cold day. The humidity dropped, and the air quality deteriorated. But this is a natural phenomenon and will gradually improve,” said Rajesh Kapadia, of Vagaries of Weather, a popular private weather blog.

Winds carrying dust blew from south Pakistan areas and adjoining the Arabian sea towards Kutch and Saurashtra towards evening.

“Dust storms accompanied by surface winds at a wind speed of 30-40 kmph gusting to 50 kmph, was over Saurashtra and Kutch, and at isolated places over adjoining Gujarat region and south Rajasthan and impacted Mumbai and adjoining areas on Sunday. The Saurashtra coast has been getting dust raising winds from Saturday evening. The Dwarka weather station reported 400-metre visibility. At Porbandar, the wind speed was more than 10 km per hour with visibility of less than one kilometre,” an IMD official said.

Mumbai AQI ‘very poor’, ‘severe’
The overall AQI for Mumbai deteriorated from 180 (moderate) on Sunday morning to 333 (very poor) by evening. The worst hit was Malad, which recorded an AQI of 436.

Chembur recorded an AQI of 347, Andheri - 340, Bhandup - 336, Mazgaon - 372, Worli - 319, BKC - 307,

Colaba -221, Borivli -162 and Navi Mumbai - 101

SAFAR categorises AQI levels for PM2.5 in the 0-50 range as good; 51-100 as satisfactory; 101-200 as moderate; 201-300 as poor; 301-400 as very poor and above 400 as severe.