Met predicts temp to remain same, fog likely

NEWDELHI: Delhi witnessed moderate fog in the early hours of Friday as the air quality remained at “very poor” levels across the capital.

In terms of temperature, the maximum on Friday was 18.1 degrees Celsius, a notch below normal, while the minimum was 7.2 degrees Celsius, normal for this time of the year, Met officials said.

At the Safdarjung observatory, which is considered a representative of the entire city, till 7.30am visibility was down to 300m.

“During the day it (the visibility) improved to 1,500 metres. This is because of good wind speed to the tune of 8-10km/hour. Later, in the afternoon, it went back down to 700 metres. On Saturday, there is a forecast of moderate fog in the morning hours,” Kuldeep Srivastava, a senior Met department scientist, said.

The visibility at the Delhi airport was 500 metres which delayed the arrival of 11 international flights, while there was no delay in departures. However, a Delhi International Airport Ltd official said there were no disruptions as the visibility was good on Friday.

The thick cloud of fog across north India, however, affected train operations with the arrival of as many as 99 trains being delayed as of 4pm on Friday. The delays for a few trains went up to over 12 hours. Besides, around 46 trains were rescheduled and 28 had to be cancelled.

According to the Met forecast, the maximum and minimum temperatures would be around 18 and 7 degree Celsius respectively on Saturday.

Pollution-wise, Delhi’s average Air Quality Index (AQI) reached 388, marginally more than Thursday’s 362, both in “very poor” level. The AQI is calculated on a scale of 0-500. An AQI between 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 satisfactory, 101-200 moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 severe.

According to the CPCB realtime monitoring, at 6pm on Friday, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 236.2ug/m3 and 354.1ug/m3 respectively.