New Delhi: Delhi and its adjoining areas woke up to a thick blanket of fog this morning that hit road, rail and air traffic and led to the loss of six lives. Six persons, two of them children, were drowned as a car ran into a canal in Greater Noida near Delhi, presumably because of the fog, officials said. At least two Delhi-bound planes had to be diverted, eight got delayed and around 30 trains are running late.
The temperature this morning dropped to 2.2 degrees Celsius from Sunday’s 2.8 degrees Celsius, according to the monitoring unit on south Delhi’s Lodhi Road.
The air quality in the national capital worsened, sliding into “severe” category this morning, with the Anand Vihar observatory recording air quality index (AQI) of 462 and the Okhla Phase-2 centre reporting an AQI of 494.
In Delhi, commuters were seen driving with emergency lights on as the visibility on city roads plummeted below 50 metres.
A severe cold wave in the national capital has also prompted a “red” warning from the weather office after the temperature on Saturday morning was recorded at 2.8 degrees Celsius at the Lodhi Road observatory. The Safdarjung observatory recorded a low of 2.4 degrees Celsius on Saturday — the lowest in decades. A “red” warning from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) means “extreme weather conditions”.
