Fog descends, visibility nil as one dies in highway pile-up

New Delhi/noida: As one person was killed and over a dozen people were injured in separate multi-vehicle pile-ups due to fog on two expressways in Greater Noida, officials from the IMD said the Capital had seen one of its first spells of fog this winter with visibility dropping to zero in some areas.

Around 15 to 20 vehicles piled up in the crash on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway in the Dankaur in the morning, local officials said.

"All damaged vehicles have been removed from the road and the injured people taken to hospital," a police spokesperson said, adding that one traveller in a tempo had died in the crash.

Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the regional forecasting centre of the India Meteorological Department, said the Palam weather station in Delhi recorded zero visibility due to very dense fog at 6:30 am.

At the Safdarjung Observatory, which provides representative data for the city, moderate fog was recorded which lowered visibility to 300 metres, he added. The visibility should be around 800 metres at the airport for flights to take off, the senior scientist said.

Mahesh Palawat, an expert at Skymet Weather, a private forecasting agency, tweeted, Today, first time Palam Airport Visibility has gone down to zero metres due to dense fog. At 06:30 hours, both runway 28 & 29 are 150 metres. Chances of flight delay.

Delhi is likely to witness moderate fog on Tuesday as well, he said. The minimum temperature settled at 12 degrees Celsius and the mercury is likely to dip with the wind direction changing to westerly-northwesterly.

Delhi's air quality was recorded in the upper end of the very poor category on Monday and is likely to improve with the wind speed picking up, according to IMD officials.