Eastern, northern parts in grip of cold wave; fog hits flights, trains

The blanket of fog that covered large swathes of northern, eastern and northeastern India on Monday morning will persist and may get thicker in the early days of the new year, the weather department said, warning of colder temperatures, poor visibility and severely disrupted travel schedules across states.

- HT Correspondents

Monday's band of fog stretched from frontier districts in Punjab in the northwest to border towns in Mizoram in the northeast, as it coursed through Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

The haze — fuelled largely by a western disturbance that swept in cold, moist air— disrupted airline and railway operations across provinces, with over 200 flights cancelled and several trains delayed. Several hundreds of flights and trains were delayed significantly as airports and train stations came to a standstill. IndiGo, India’s largest airline, cancelled 112 flights across India, Air India cancelled around 50, and Air India Express 29.

Northern India bore the brunt, with the visibility plunging below 50m in parts of Jammu, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, eastern Madhya Pradesh and Chandigarh, said officials from the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

The department warned that dense to very dense fog conditions are likely to persist during night and morning hours over Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh until New Year's Eve. Isolated pockets of Jammu and northern Madhya Pradesh will see dense fog until December 30, while Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar can expect similar conditions to linger until January 5.