Mercury up but dense fog returns

New Delhi: Dense fog and biting cold were back to plague Delhiites even though the day temperature went up slightly and the afternoon remained sunny. Due to low visibility between Thursday night and Friday morning, four flights were diverted while some were delayed. The Met department has predicted more dense fog on Saturday morning though temperatures are expected to go up slightly.
The maximum and minimum temperatures on Friday were 15.6 degrees celsius, 5 degrees below normal, and 4.3 degrees celsius, 3 degrees below normal, respectively. "There has been a significant change in weather over the past day. A fresh spell of fog seems to be developing while a change in wind pattern due to a passing western disturbance has led to incursion of moisture in the atmosphere. On Saturday morning, there are chances of CAT-III dense fog and temperatures are likely to rise," said RK Jenamani, director in charge, IGI Met.
At IGI airport, visibility started falling from 8.30pm on Thursday. In an hour, visibility had dropped by 300m and by 11.30pm, there was below 50m visibility. Till 5.30am, there was dense fog at the airport because of which four flights had to be diverted, two of them to Jaipur and another to Bangalore. Runway visual range also fell drastically, going down to 75m on the new runway at a time when it was still 2,000m on the main runway. It started improving only around 5.30am.
08/01/11 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jan 2011