Brace for dense fog in morning, minimum temp to be around 6°C

NEW DELHI: The Met department has forecast heavy fog for Republic Day morning. On Thursday morning, dense fog was reported at Safdarjung and very dense fog at Palam.

In the early morning, five flights had to be diverted during the low visibility period, said Delhi International Airport Limited officials. Railway officials said 32 trains were running late, 11 rescheduled and 17 cancelled due to low visibility in Delhi and other places in North India on Thursday.

“There was very dense fog in the early hours at Palam. Between 1am and 4.30am, there was zero visibility. It improved to 100m at 8.30am and then gradually got better. The visibility went down to 100m at 6am in Safdarjung and improved thereafter. On Friday, too, the fog situation will remain similar,” Kuldeep Srivastava, a senior scientist of the Regional Weather Forecasting Centre, said.

Apart from the dense morning fog, Friday will have clear sky and the maximum and minimum temperatures would be around 20 and 6 degree Celsius, respectively.

Thursday, too, was a chilly day in the city with the maximum temperature touching 18.4 degree Celsius, four notches below normal. The minimum temperature was recorded at 8.8 degree Celsius, a point above what is normal for this time of the year.

In terms of pollution, the air quality i ndex on Thursday clocked 257, marginally better than Wednesday’s 265, both in “poor” levels. 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 6am on Thursday, the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 134.7ug/m3 and 230.6ug/m3 respectively. The particulate matters decreased slightly throughout the day and on Thursday at 6pm the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 were 115.8ug/m3 and 217.8ug/m3.

Both PM10 and PM2.5 are ultrafine particles, the dominant pollutants in Delhi. The acceptable levels of PM10 and PM 2.5 are 100μg/m3 and 60μg/m3, respectively.

THURSDAY WAS A CHILLY DAY IN THE CITY WITH MAXIMUM TEMP TOUCHING 18.4C AND MINIMUM AT 8.8°C