Delhi wakes up to foggy morning, 12 trains, several flights delayed

A thick blanket of fog enveloped the national capital on Friday, hampering the train and flights services in Delhi.

The latest data compiled by Indian Railways revealed that as many as 12 trains were rescheduled after getting delayed for at least by 2 hours.

The trains Yoga Express, Anand Vihar Express, Mumbai CST Amritsar Express, and Shiv Ganga Express were delayed by two hours each, while Brahmaputra Mail, Sangam Express and Poorva Express were delayed by 2:30 hours each.

Owing to low visibility, Purushottam Express, and Sapt Kranti Express were delayed by four and three hours respectively. Several flights were also rescheduled and diverted at Delhi airport.

Today, the minimum and maximum temperature in Delhi will hover at 7 Degree Celsius and 22 Degree Celsius.

As per the Skymet Weather, a private weather forecasting agency, dense to very dense fog is expected to make an appearance over Northern Plains January 7 onward. The intensity of fog during that time will be much more and visibility may drop down to zero.

West Uttar Pradesh, Delhi NCR, Punjab, Haryana and North Rajasthan are also likely to receive rainfall on January 5 and 6.

Apart from Delhi, the dense to very dense fog was observed at isolated places over Haryana and its surrounding regions today. West Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Coastal Andhra Pradesh were engulfed with moderate fog today.

Visibility in Hissar and Palam were 25 meters each; Ganganagar-50 meters; Safdarjung, Bareilly, and Bahraich; Sultanpur, Patna, Bhagalpur and Bapatla -500 meter each, said India Meteorological Department.

In the past two days, Delhi's neighbour Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand has seen widespread light to moderate rain accompanied snow. Interestingly, Gulmarg has received season's first good spell of snowfall.

On the other hand, heavy downpour in these regions led to the shutdown of arterial Srinagar-Jammu National Highway which connects the Kashmir valley with the rest of the country. Besides this, Srinagar-Leh highway, the Mughal road and many other areas were cut off from various places in both north and south Kashmir.

As per the weather experts, bone-chilling cold wave would prevail over several areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in coming days while the majority of the hill stations would continue with sub-zero temperatures for at least one week.