Fog today, rain tomorrow

Season’s worst fog hit almost 250 flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Monday. Tuesday is expected to be worse followed by three days of rain.

Season’s worst fog hit almost 250 flights, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Monday. Tuesday is expected to be worse followed by three days of rain.

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The visibility is likely to fall below 50 metre early Tuesday but the day will be sunny. Visibility has to be normal, around 1,000 metre, for non-CAT III compliant aircraft to operate.

"It's likely to improve after 9am but the airport will witness at least 12 hours of dense fog —from 9.30pm Monday to 9am Tuesday," a Met department official said. Rain is expected Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Fog was thick since Sunday evening but flight operations were hit after 2.30am Monday when the visibility on the busy runway 29 dropped to below 50 metre. The runway was shut for six hours. Eleven flights were cancelled and 21 diverted. “More than 200 flights were delayed by two to 10 hours,” an airport official said.

But fog didn’t bring back the bone-chilling cold the city witnessed early this month. The maximum temperature was 21° Celsius, normal for this time of the year, and the minimum 10.6°C, three degrees above normal.