Gurgaon: Heavy fog to continue for three days, expect rain on Thursday

Visibility across Gurgaon was less than 30 metres on Monday morning which led to traffic and train operations being severely affected.

Officials at the India Meteorological Department said, possibility of rainfall on Republic Day (Thursday) is high and foggy conditions will prevail for the next three days.

Meanwhile, on Monday morning traffic moved at a snail’s pace, delaying commuters, especially office-goers. It further aggravated when rush hour began leading to traffic on all major routes including the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, Mehrauli-Gurgaon road, Sohna road, Golf Course road and Gurgaon-Faridabad road slowing down. Commuters reported an average delay of over 20 minutes than usual.

Many drivers drove their vehicles with hazard warning lights on and those equipped with fog lights used it to navigate through traffic.

Adding to the woes, an Indica car caught fire around 8.30 am at IFFCO Chowk. As per NHAI officials, the driver escaped unhurt. However, traffic leading from Gurgaon to New Delhi worsened as one lane of the four-lane highway was blocked until cranes moved the vehicle around 9.30 am. Until then, due to limited road-width drivers struggled to switch lanes leading to delay.

“My office is located at Vasant Vihar, and it takes me around forty-five minutes to reach there. However, today (Monday), the visibility was so low that drivers did not exceed over 50 km per hour on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway and I reached work nearly forty minutes late,” said Vandana Khajuria of sector 49.

Traffic police officials reported three minor accidents took place in the morning. No major injuries were reported.

Seeing the prevailing foggy conditions, Delhi traffic police had issued an advisory on Sunday night asking commuters to avoid mishaps during fog.

Officials at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the minimum temperature will hover around 10 degrees Celsius and the maximum temperature was expected to be around 23.8 degree Celsius.

Northern Railway officials reported that the New Delhi-Ajmer Shatabdi and Ahmedabad-New Delhi Rajdhani Express were delay by more than thirty minutes against their scheduled arrival. While, the Bikaner-Delhi (Sarai Rohilla) Express was delayed by nearly two hours.