IMD Weather Update: North India witnesses severe cold and fog, temperatures expected to drop further

Fog blanketed wide areas of north India on Wednesday, reducing visibility to dangerously low levels, halting train and aircraft services, and triggering a car pileup in Uttar Pradesh as residents tried to escape the bitter cold. 

According to the India Meteorological Department, a layer of thick to extremely dense fog remained across Punjab, Haryana, northwest Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and portions of Uttarakhand due to the region's low temperatures, high humidity, and calm winds.

The IMD has issued a warning that, owing to moisture and weak winds at lower tropospheric levels over the Indo-Gangetic plains, thick to extremely dense fog in many/most pockets is quite possible across Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh throughout the night and early hours in the next 24 hours.

In Kashmir, the chilliest winter season known as Chilla-i-Kalan also froze the water's edge of several bodies of water.

Several cars collided on the Lucknow-Gorakhpur National Highway, resulting in at least 11 injuries, while in Delhi, heavy fog caused delays of between 1:30 and 5 hours for 18 trains.

The airport in Delhi continued operating as usual. Bad weather in Chandigarh, Varanasi, and Lucknow on Tuesday night forced the return or diversion of three planes to Delhi.

IMD defines extremely thick fog as visibility below 50 metres, dense fog as between 51 and 200 metres, moderate fog as between 201 and 500 metres, and shallow fog as above 1,000 metres.

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The principal meteorological station in Delhi, the Sadarjung Observatory, reported a slightly below average lowest temperature of 7.1 degrees Celsius.

The daytime high reached a season low of 21.2 degrees Celsius. In the next days, we may expect temperatures of 5 and 20 degrees Celsius respectively.