Delhi weather: As winter has started gripping several parts of the country, Delhi on Wednesday morning was cloaked by moderate fog. It also affected road and rail traffic in the national capital as visibility was reduced to 400 metres.
According to a railway spokesperson, at least 18 trains were running late by 1:30 to 5 hours. Although the operations at the airport largely remained normal, at least three flights were returned or diverted to the Delhi airport due to bad weather in Chandigarh, Varanasi and Lucknow on Tuesday night, December 20.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the Palam airport logged the lowest visibility level of 400 metres at 2:30 am, while it dropped to 500 metres at the Safdarjung airport at 5:30 am. The visibility levels had plunged to 50 metres at both these places on Tuesday night.
A representative of IMD attributed the increase in visibility to southerly winds at the middle troposphere and the rise in temperatures over the past 24 hours.
Dense fog persisted in several states in North India
However, a layer of dense to extremely dense fog persisted over Punjab, Haryana, northwest Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and parts of Uttarakhand due to low temperatures, high moisture, and calm winds.
At 5:30 am, visibility levels stood at zero in Bhatinda; 25m in Ganganagar, Amritsar and Bareilly, and 50m in Varanasi, Bahraich and Ambala.
In a statement issued at 1:30 pm, the IMD said dense to very dense fog in most pockets is very likely over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh during the night and morning hours in the next 24h hours due to moisture and light winds at lower tropospheric levels over the Indo-Gangetic plains.
Fog is predicted to decrease in intensity and spread thereafter, it said.
According to the India Meteorological Department, very dense fog is when visibility is between 0 and 50 metres, 51 and 200 is dense, 201 and 500 moderate, and 501 and 1,000 shallow.
The Safdarjung Observatory, the primary weather station in Delhi, recorded a minimum temperature of 7.1 degrees Celsius, a notch below normal. The maximum temperature settled at 21.2 degrees Celsius, the lowest so far this season. The minimum and maximum temperatures are likely to drop to 5 degrees Celsius and 20 degrees Celsius in the next few days.
(With PTI inputs)
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