Delhi weather takes turn for worse: thick fog across capital

Delhi’s air quality index has been slipping in and out of the “severe” category very recently. On Saturday, a dense fog was observed enveloping Delhi since around 5:30 am. Temperatures fell very low, settling at almost 6.4 degrees Celsius.

The Indian Meteorological Department claimed that extreme cold conditions in addition to light drizzles would be observed over the weekend in Delhi.

The air quality in Delhi was recorded at 429, which means that it falls under the ‘severe’ category. In places such as Ashok Vihar, the AQI was 467, while 430 AQI was observed in some areas around ITO. Places such as Wazirpur saw an even higher air quality rating.

The quality of air indexes ranging from 201 to 300 are considered to be of poor quality. The range from 301 to 400, is considered ‘very poor’ and the range from 401-500 is considered ‘severe’. The air quality ranging above 500 comes under the Severe plus category.

A thick fog covered major parts of of Delhi, UP, Haryana, Jharkhand, Punjab, Assam and Meghalaya on Saturday morning. At the same time, extremely dense foggy conditions were observed in the isolated pockets over Punjab, Chandigarh and Rajasthan.

Flights have been diverted, delayed and cancelled in the process. 46 flights have been diverted owing to the fog as of midnight of the 20th of December, according to airport officials.

Flights have been affected because of the bad weather. While landings and departures are still inotiok to some extent, flights are affected due to the operational limitations of the crew at large. Passengers have been requested by the airlines, especially Indigo, to keep check on the status of the flights and the estimated delay of the flights as the time frame of flight delays has increased beyond 5-6 hours. Over 750 flights have been delayed and about 19 have been cancelled owing to the existent weather conditions.