Dense fog grips Delhi, hampers train, flight services

As the dense fog and cold wave conditions continued to engulf the national capital, several flights and trains coming in and departing from Delhi were delayed on Friday morning causing inconvenience to the passengers.

As many as 14 trains were delayed by over three hours. The list of delayed trains included Barauni-New Delhi Vaishali Express, Mahabodhi Express, Poorva Express, Shiv Ganga Express.

According to Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), cold wave to severe cold wave conditions will continue to prevail over major parts of Delhi and other northern Indian states including Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, north Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Uttar Pradesh for two more days.

The minimum temperature in the national capital is predicted to take a dip by 1 degree Celsius and likely to freeze at 3 degree Celsius on Saturday.

According to the weather forecaster, dense fog was observed at isolated places over Punjab and Chhattisgarh and moderate fog was observed at isolated places over Haryana, Delhi and West Uttar Pradesh at 5.30 am on Friday.

The IMD predicted that dense fog during late night and morning hours is likely to prevail at isolated pockets including Delhi and Chandigarh on December 30 and 31.

Further, the Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi shows that concentration of both pollutants, Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) and Particulate Matter 10 (PM 10), is in the "poor" category.