New Delhi, December 29
Plains of North India were completely fogged out on Monday with the duration of fog at several places extending well beyond afternoon. In fact, the dense fog cover that the region experienced today has been the worst so far this season and at some places it persisted throughout the day, throwing normal life completely out of gear.
In Punjab, there are places where fog has not lifted for the entire day in the past 48 hours. But today, for the first time in the season, the entire stretch in north faced dense fog condition. In Delhi, it extended beyond open regions into city areas as well.
The Met office says the cold and dense fog conditions prevailing over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, west Uttar Pradesh and north Rajasthan are likely to continue during early morning hours on December 30 and 31 as well.
The steep drop in temperature has been prevailing in entire North India, especially Punjab and Haryana, with Amritsar registering a minimum temperature of 1.6 degrees Celsius on Sunday. But the bad news here is that there is likely to be no let up in the temperature scenario during the next 48 hours and the Met prediction is that temperature is likely to fall on
December 31 and January 1 by 2-4º C.
While many parts of northern India have been reeling under biting cold conditions and dense fog for past two days, plains of Punjab and Haryana have been the worst hit.
As a result many flights were delayed and schedule of several trains was thrown out of gear. Rail traffic across Punjab, Haryana as well as Delhi was also adversely hit due to fog with several trains running two to six hours behind the schedule. Even vehicular traffic along the national and state highways suffered due to zero visibility.
IMD Director BP Yadav says at present conditions are favourable that are helping the fog build up. In Delhi, visibility dropped to less than 50 metres on Monday. On Tuesday as well, the visibility is likely to reduce below 50 m due to very dense fog (CAT-II/III) in early hours of the morning.
While the Amritsar airport has been facing the fog fury, in Chandigarh also visibility was reduced to 50 metres today morning, resulting in cancellation of two Mumbai-bound flights, airline officials said.
Some of the flights that were delayed included Gulf Air flight GF 130 from Bahrain to Delhi, Air India flight AI 840 from Abu Dhabi to Delhi, Jet Airways flight 9W264 from Delhi to Kathmandu, Indian Airlines flight IC 897 from Delhi to Dubai.
