Delhiites woke up to the first foggy morning of the season, which impacted air and rail traffic on Wednesday.
The dense fog that engulfed Delhi-NCR resulted in a sharp dip in visibility at Indira Gandhi International Airport, resulting in 15 flights getting diverted and more than 100 getting delayed.
50 Delhi-bound trains hit
While low visibility procedures were implemented at the airport from around 2 a.m., after visibility dipped to around 1,000-metre, it suddenly plunged to 100-metre around 8 a.m. and remained so till about 9 a.m.
Train services were also hit, with more than 50 Delhi-bound train from Patna, Ranchi, Howrah, Bhubaneswar and other places running late between one to three hours.
Lack of space
Passengers complained about lack of space at the airport, particularly the space-constrained Terminal 1D, with no place to sit as flight after flight got delayed. The effect on flight movement, however, was not as severe since many early morning flights had already departed.
“The real morning rush hour starts from 6 a.m. and remains till 8 a.m. Since the visibility worsened at around 8.12 a.m., bulk of departures had already taken off from the airport,” said an airport official.
Flights that had to be diverted included 14 domestic and one international flight. According to sources, the flights got delayed because either the pilots were not trained to land in such low visibility conditions or the aircraft were not compliant with the CAT IIIB Instrument Landing System.
R.K Jenamani, the Director in-charge of the Meteorological Department at the airport, said: “Sudden changes in certain meteorological conditions, especially as winds calmed down across Delhi in that last 24hours compared to its preceding 24 hours and some easterly wind components, caused fog formation.”
The minimum temperature recorded was 11 degrees Celsius, one degree above normal for the season, a rise from Tuesday’s minimum of 9.7 degrees. The maximum was at 25.9 degrees, considered normal for this time of the year, which was cooler than Tuesday, which recorded a temperature that was four degrees higher than normal.
Moderate to dense fog
The Weather Department has forecast moderate to dense fog on Thursday as well, with temperatures expected to hover between 12 degrees and 25 degrees.
As per the forecast, the most likely scenario is that this dense fog spell may be taken as an isolated cases for a day or two, which will last not longer than two to three hours. The Department added there was no indication of the beginning of the main fog season.
