Delhi on Saturday (January 24, 2026) saw a sharp drop in temperature and slight improvement in air quality after persistent rains the previous day.

According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the minimum temperature at Safdarjung station was recorded at 7.6 degrees Celsius, 0.1 degrees above normal, significantly down from Friday’s minimum temperature of 13.7 degrees Celsius, the highest in four years.

Among other major stations, Palam and Lodhi Road stations were the coldest with both recording a minimum temperature of 6.8 degrees Celsius, The Ridge station at 6.6 degrees Celsius and Ayanagar station at 6 degrees Celsius.

Air quality improved slightly on Saturday morning, with the average air quality index (AQI) settling at 256 in the ‘poor’ category, as against 293 on Friday, according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) Sameer app.

Air quality was ‘poor’ at 29 stations and ‘very poor’ at four stations. At the time of writing this report, AQI data were not available for the three stations. Among the stations, Dwarka recorded the lowest AQI of 113.

According to the CPCB, an AQI of 0-50 is considered ‘good’, 51-100 ‘satisfactory’, 101-200 ‘moderate’, 201-300 ‘poor’, 301-400 ‘very poor’ and 401-500 ‘severe’.

The Air Quality Early Warning System predicts that Delhi’s air quality will remain in the ‘poor’ category for the next two days. The outlook for the next six days is likely to fall into the “very poor” to “very poor” category.

According to IMD, the maximum temperature is likely to be in the range of 17-19 degrees Celsius and the minimum temperature in the range of 6-8 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature is expected to be similar to normal, while the maximum temperature is expected to be 1.3 to 3.3 degrees lower than normal.

The IMD also predicted generally cloudy skies and light to moderate fog during the morning hours, with strong surface winds in the range of 10-20 km/h.