Fog disrupts 230 flights at IGI, air quality ‘severe’

NEW DELHI: Delhi witnessed another foggy day on Tuesday, which affected the movement of more than 230 flights.

The average air quality level also touched 408 in the “severe” zone on Tuesday, marginally higher than Monday’s 400.

A Delhi International Airport Limited official official said that Delhi airport had witnessed a low visibility period of 15 hours 30 minutes from 9pm on January 1 to 12.30pm of January 2. During this period, 191 flights were delayed, of which 35 were due to the weather and the remaining due to other reasons. Nine flights were cancelled out of which five because of Delhi weather. No flights were, however, diverted on Tuesday.

RK Jenamani, the director in-charge of the IGI airport meteorological unit, said that after a 24-hour period of dense fog formation, there has been a sudden improvement.

“Around 2am on Tuesday, the fog became moderate at IGI airport. During the day, we witnessed low clouds. Tomorrow (Wednesday), shallow to moderate fog is expected with chances of dese fog formation for an hour or two,” he said.

Indian Railways officials said that 21 trains were cancelled, 64 delayed and around 24 rescheduled since Tuesday morning, due to heavy fog in several parts of northern India.

Experts say that fog was being caused because of high humidity levels in the air and low wind speed. The maximum humidity on Tuesday was 97%. Fog formation starts when RH levels shoots up beyond 75%.

“At the Safdarjung observatory, at 4am on Tuesday the visibility had become zero,” a MET official said.

“It slowly improved after that. At 8.30am, it was around 150m and later reached around 900m during the day. This is because of the 7-8km per hour wind speed later in the day, which is better than Monday’s calm conditions. On Wednesday, we are expected visibility to be around 200 metres in the morning hours. Overall, the conditions will be similar to that of Tuesday but with comparitevly less fog,” Kuldeep Srivastava, a senior MET scientist, said.

In terms of temperature, the maximum on Tuesday was 17.7 degree Celsius, two notches below normal, while the minimum was 8.4 degree Celsius, a notch above normal.

On Monday, Delhiites had been greeted by one of the coldest New Year days since 2013, with the minimum temperature dropping to 5.7 degrees. It was also the coldest day of the season so far.

According to the MET department, the maximum and minimum temperatures would be around 19 and 6 degree Celsius respectively on Wednesday.

SAFAR – which is India’s official pollution forecasting system – has claimed that pollution levels will improve from Wednesday when moisture levels drop and the wind picks up speed.