Thick fog throws life in New Delhi out of gear

A thick fog yesterday enveloped the Indian capital and several areas of Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh, throwing air traffic out of gear for almost seven hours in Delhi and hitting rail and road traffic with office-goers and students facing problems in reaching their destinations.

Delhiites woke up to the season's first foggy morning with visibility reduced to a few metres.

The dense fog descended shortly after midnight reducing runway visibility range to 200 metres, airport sources said adding that four international and one domestic flights were diverted and no flight could be operated for almost seven hours.

While the last international arrival was at 0115 hours , the last domestic flight landed at 0148, they said. The operations resumed as the fog started to clear with the first domestic flight taking off from here at 0945 hours for Ahmedabad followed by another to Bangalore.

Fog also hit train services with many of them running behind schedule, northern railway sources said.

Weathermen predict the weather might worsen further in the coming days and even express fear that Delhi may witness sub-zero temperature this winter for the first time in the past 58 years. While thick fog cover around this time of the year is a normal phenomenon in his part, interestingly unlike in the past when pollution was blamed for it, heavy snowfall and rains in Himachal Pradesh is being cited as the cause for it this time since pollution levels have fallen drastically in the city over the past one year due to closure of polluting industries and shift to cleaner fuel for vehicles.