Monday, was the first day of widespread dense fog in Delhi and North India this season. It was not only confined to these areas alone but a large part of East India also witnessed dense fog that severely affected rail, road and air traffic. A large number of flights were delayed at all major airports in India, particularly at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI).
At 6:30 in the morning, the level of visibility at the important airports in India was:
Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi – Nil visibility (below 50 meters)
Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport, Amritsar – Nil
Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Airport, Patna – Zero visibility
Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport, Lucknow – 100 meters
Netaji Subash Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata – Visibility up to 1 km
Enveloped in a layer of thick fog, flight operations in Delhi were the most affected, where before 11:00 am today, almost 44 flights were delayed by an average of about 30 minutes. The fog condition had forced the authorities to shut down the airport for a couple of hours in the morning.
Out of the 7 flights scheduled from Amritsar to Delhi, 5 flights were cancelled and two others were delayed by more than half an hour.
Further, 8 flights were delayed at the Kolkata airport, 5 flights from Mumbai to Delhi were delayed by over 40 minutes and 1 flight was delayed at the Jaipur airport.
“A reversal in the wind pattern in the plains from normal dry and cool northwesterly winds to humid southeasterly winds led to this widespread dense fog in Delhi, North India and East India”, explained a senior meteorologist at skymetweather.com
Fog in Delhi usually starts from the first week of December and sometimes even from the last week of November, but due to the lack of active Western Disturbances this time around, it started off only from the middle of the month.
Right now the fog cover that you see in Delhi will get cleared by afternoon, though it will continue to be hazy throughout the day.
Weather forecast at Skymet shows that the season of fog has begun in North and East India and will continue to affect the region till mid-February at regular intervals.
Photo by Skymet.
