Clouds prevent fog from blowing away

The Sunday morning traffic crawled with fog-lights on. A cloudy sky made sure that the air was still, preventing the fog and the smog from being blown away.

Delhiites woke up to the season’s foggiest day so far on Sunday when a thick veil covered the city reducing visibility to below 100 metres early morning.

HT Image

The Sunday morning traffic crawled with fog-lights on. A cloudy sky made sure that the air was still, preventing the fog and the smog from being blown away. “I could not see India Gate while driving around it at 6 am. The dividers, too, were indistinct,” said Sudha Murthy, a housewife from Bharti Nagar on Maharshi Raman Marg.

But the fog had engulfed the city around midnight itself, when visibility dropped below 50 metres. At relatively less congested areas like Dwarka, the visibility reduced to a zilch. “We were returning from a night show when the we realised we could not see a thing ahead. It was a hazy layer of nothing all around us. Could have been dangerous,” said Cyril Nair, an MNC executive living in Dwarka.

“A huge mass of clouds is passing over Northwest India, causing rainfall and snow. That’s the source of the moisture in Delhi's air, which is turning into fog,” said the duty officer at the Safdarjung Met Office.

But the bad news is that the forecast is not encouraging. The Met department sees similar conditions prevailing in Delhi over the next two days.

It was yet another unusually warm morning, with the minimum temperature at 13.5 degrees Celsius on Sunday, when it should have been much cooler at around 8 degrees Celsius.

The maximum temperature, which is the highest temperature during the day, stood at 22.2, cooler than expected. “The sky will be clear in the next few days but there will be fog on ground. However, a clear sky will ensure that day temperatures rise, with the sun in full glare. The night temperature, subsequently, will fall,” said the weatherman.

So far, it has been one of the warmest Decembers ever with most days recording above normal temperatures and on several occasions the temperatures standing as much as nine degrees warmer than the normal mark..