Delhi and the NCR region had remained far away from dense fog. Even when fog did make an appearance on a few occasions, it was only in the moderate category. However, in a first, Delhi witnessed its thickest fog of the season wherein the visibility dropped to new lows.
The visibility at Palam dropped down to 50 metres resulting in massive delays and cancellations of flights, trains and wreaking havoc over road traffic during the morning hours. On the rail front, 12 trains have observed delays due to low visibility.
Air wise, all flights departing from Delhi had been put on hold due to dense fog 7:30 am onward, for an hour or so. Usually, dense fog does not hold flights back and the runway visual range is invariably higher than the visibility.
However, today morning, the Runway visual range had itself dropped to 75 metres simultaneously along with the visibility as well. Not only this, the pollution level has also reached the severe category resulting in Delhiites to choke on bad quality air.
Some important trains including New Jalpaiguri-New Delhi Express, Poorva Express (Howrah-New Delhi), Kashi Vishwanath Express (Varanasi-New Delhi), Garib Rath Express (Bhagalpur-Anand Vihar), Purushottam Express (Puri-New Delhi) have suffered massive delays.
Fog today was not only the first dense fog of the season for the national capital, but it was also widespread in nature. The change in wind direction to southeasterly due to the presence of Western Disturbance and its induced system. For a brief time, during the passage of the systems, winds will become northwesterly in nature resulting in reduction of fog.
Thereafter, a Western Disturbance is approaching the Himalayas tomorrow and will continue to affect the Northern Hills until January 6. In fact, an induced system will also cause rains over the plains of North India inclusive of Delhi and the NCR region on the night of January 5 and January 6.
Thereafter, dense fog will once again make an appearance and the density of fog will remain on the higher side January 7 onward which will again cause the pollution levels to rise.
Image Credit: wikipedia
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