Dense fog disrupts flights, trains as cold wave enters 6th day in Delhi, northern states

The cold wave sweeping across Delhi and the northern states continued on Tuesday with dense fog disrupting air, rail and road traffic due to the low visibility.

Dense fog delayed the take-off of 50 domestic flights at the Delhi airport this morning while 18 incoming flights as visibility was low.

The fog cover also hit train services, delaying 39 trains, a Railways spokesperson said.

Visibility was down to just 50 metres on the roads of the national capital this morning.

The capital, however, got some relief after five consecutive days of chills. The Safdarjung observatory, Delhi’s primary weather station, recorded a minimum temperature of 6.4 degrees Celsius. The minimum temperature was hovering between 1.5 and 4 degrees in the national capital in the previous five days.

The cold wave spell in Delhi has been so intense that the national capital has recorded a minimum temperature lower than that of most places in the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Meteorologists attribute the long spell of intense cold to a large gap between two western disturbances, which caused frosty winds from the snow-covered Himalayas to blow in for a longer-than-usual period.