On the night of May 14, 2025, Delhi and its surrounding areas such as Gurgaon were enshrouded in a thick layer of dust around 10 pm. This led to poor air quality and health conditions such as eye irritations. The dust came from Rajasthan and was picked up by strong surface winds.
The situation in many areas has continued into May 15, with the Sirifort air quality monitoring station of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) measuring air quality index as high as 389 around 4 pm on May 15.
Momentarily, visibility at the Indira Gandhi International Airport went down to 1,200 metres from 4,000 metres, before going back to normal, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
“There was high north-south pressure gradient over Northwest India which caused strong dust raising surface winds of 30-40 kilometres per hour (kmph) over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and north Rajasthan from the night of May 14 to the morning of May 15,” said IMD in a press release.
“Under the influence of these strong winds, dust was advected from West Rajasthan to Delhi NCR across north Rajasthan, south Punjab and south Haryana, leading to a reduction in visibility, with IGI Airport Delhi reporting lowest visibility of 1,200m intermittently during the period,” the weather agency added.
IMD’s regional centre in Jaipur had earlier predicted a dust storm over Rajasthan for May 14 in a bulletin that was issues at around 1:30 pm on the same day. Many places in Rajasthan, like Bikaner, also experienced dust storms.
The development of a thunderstorm with wind speed of 15-25 kmph and gusts of up to 35 kmph was also predicted by the regional centre in Delhi for the city.
Wind speeds, which had been low during the intervening night of May 14-15, improved and brought the visibility at the Delhi airport to 4,000 m by 11:30 am of May 15.
“Sand and dust storm episodes contribute directly to air pollution by increasing particulate matter concentrations. In some regions, dust is the main source of air pollution from particulate matter,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO) on its website.
“These dust episodes constitute a growing environmental and public health concern, mainly for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. They impact many areas of the world, whether nearby or thousands of kilometres from deserts or dust emission sources, due to their effect on air quality,” as per WHO.
Delhi, along with the rest of northwest India, suffers from such dust storms every year, mainly during the pre-monsoon period. Dust rising from regions as far as Saudi Arabia and sometimes even the Sahara gets transported here with westerly winds during this period.