A thick blanket of fog was seen in Delhi and neighbouring cities this morning. Airlines have also issued an advisory for passengers taking flights from Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Thirty trains are running late due to low visibility. Though no flights have been cancelled, but three flights to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International airport have been diverted. The airport authorities have asked the air passengers to contact their respective airlines for flight updates. Flights are operating at the airport under CAT III B conditions, which means that the runway visual range (RVR) is between 50 metres and 175 metres.
The temperature this morning fell to 2.2 degree Celsius from 2.8 degree Celsius on Sunday, according to the monitoring unit on south Delhi’s Lodhi Road.
The air quality in the national capital is very bad with the Anand Vihar observatory recording air quality index (AQI) of 462 and the Okhla Phase-2 centre reporting an AQI of 494.
Six people, including two children, were killed when their car skidded off the road and fell into a canal in Greater Noida, apparently due to fog, the police said this morning.
At Delhi airport, CAT III B compliant aircraft are currently able to land using instrument landing system or ILS, officials said. The airlines have asked people to stay in touch for updated flight information. Three flights have been diverted so far.
Since December 14, the national capital has been experiencing “severe cold days” with the average minimum temperature on Sunday morning being recorded at 3.4 degrees Celsius, four notches below what is considered normal for this time of the year.
The mean temperature for December 2019 till Sunday was 19.07 degrees Celsius and it is “most likely to become second coldest December since 1901”, behind 17.3 degrees Celsius in December 1997, the Met department said.
Humidity levels oscillated between 64 per cent to 100 per cent, it added.
For Monday, the weatherman had predicted dense fog in the morning with cold day at a few places in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR).
