Delhi's climate follows the same continental Indo-Gangetic pattern as neighbouring Haryana, but its dense urban footprint and position downwind of large-scale crop-residue burning give it one of the most severe and globally reported seasonal air-quality crises of any major world capital. For live interactive rainfall, wind and satellite maps over Delhi, open VayuMet.
Delhi sits at the northwestern edge of the Gangetic plain along the Yamuna river, with the low, rocky Delhi Ridge — the northernmost extension of the Aravalli range — running through the city. The Ridge has some local moderating effect but no major independent climatic influence; Delhi's weather is essentially that of the surrounding Haryana-Uttar Pradesh plain.
Winter (December-February) is cold and foggy, driven by western disturbances. Pre-monsoon summer (March-June) is very hot and can bring dust storms blown in from Rajasthan. The monsoon (July-September) is moderate, similar to Haryana's fringe-of-reach position relative to the main monsoon current. Post-monsoon (October-November) is Delhi's defining bad-air season, when a specific meteorological setup traps pollution from vehicles, industry and large-scale regional stubble burning close to the surface.
Falling temperatures, calm winds and a shallow boundary layer combine to trap pollutants close to the surface just as large-scale paddy-stubble burning peaks in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana — a genuine meteorological mechanism, not purely an emissions story, that produces Delhi's globally reported seasonal smog crisis.
Western disturbances bring Delhi's main winter precipitation and are typically followed by dense fog and cold-wave conditions.
Delhi experiences frequent pre-monsoon heatwave conditions, sometimes compounded by dust storms blown in from Rajasthan.
Like Haryana, Delhi depends mainly on stronger Bay of Bengal-origin depressions to deliver substantial monsoon rain, giving it a comparatively short, light monsoon season.
Frequencies cited from published IMD/IITM climatology where a source is named inline; day-count figures in the table below are computed directly from the 1951–2025 IMD daily archive.
The table below is a district-wide average for Delhi, built from IMD's real 1991-2020 gridded rainfall/temperature normals and 1951-2025 daily archives (not a forecast). Use the district climatology tool linked below for finer detail.
| Season | Rainfall (mm) | Rain days | Mean Max / Min (°C) | Typical Hottest / Coldest (°C) | Sky (Sunny·Partly·Overcast days) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter Jan–Feb | 37.9 | 7.3 | 22.3 / 9.3 | 26.8 / 6.9 | 23.0·36.0·0.0 |
| Pre-Monsoon (Summer) Mar–May | 58.4 | 12.7 | 35.7 / 20.8 | 41.0 / 12.8 | 44.7·47.3·0.0 |
| Monsoon (SW) Jun–Sep | 554.6 | 59.8 | 35.6 / 26.6 | 40.6 / 23.2 | 40.1·80.9·1.0 |
| Post-Monsoon Oct–Dec | 23.9 | 5.5 | 27.9 / 13.6 | 34.8 / 6.4 | 69.2·22.8·0.0 |
State figures are a simple average across 11 member districts (IMD Pune 1991–2020 normal; day-count and sky figures from real 1951–2025 daily archives — see District Climatology tool for any single district's own numbers, which can differ substantially from this state average).
Computed directly from the real IMD 1951–2025 daily gridded archive — not a forecast, and not the same as a single-station record. IMD's gridded temperature is 1°×1° (~111 km/cell) and rainfall is 0.25°×0.25° (~25 km/cell); both are spatial analyses of many station observations; a famous single-station record (e.g. a specific town's all-time hottest day) will typically read higher than the grid-cell value shown here, since one station reading isn't smoothed over a ~25–111 km box. "Place" is the nearest district to the grid cell where the extreme occurred, not necessarily the exact spot.
Post-monsoon (Oct-Nov). A recurring temperature-inversion and calm-wind setup, combined with regional stubble burning and local emissions, produces some of the worst seasonal air quality of any major world capital.
Pre-monsoon (Apr-Jun). Delhi sees frequent, sometimes severe pre-monsoon heatwave conditions.
Winter (Dec-Jan). Multi-day fog and cold-wave spells regularly disrupt road, rail and flight schedules.
Monsoon (Jul-Sep). The Yamuna has periodically flooded parts of Delhi, often driven less by local rainfall than by heavy releases from the upstream Hathnikund barrage during an active monsoon spell.
Click a district on the District Climatology tool or search it on the 10-day forecast page for its own normals — the grid below is the full current list (India's Local Government Directory codes, cross-checked against the latest state reorganisation).