Updated on: Dec 29, 2025 09:43 am IST
Delhi weather: Thick fog in Delhi drastically reduced visibility on Monday, with an Air Quality Index categorised as ‘severe’.
The dense haze in Delhi made people go “what the fog!” on Monday as visibility dropped to zero, beginning Sunday evening, in several parts of the city and its adjoining areas like Uttar Pradesh’s Noida, Ghaziabad as well as Haryana’s Gurugram.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued an orange alert for Monday and a yellow alert for Tuesday, forecasting dense to very dense fog under the prevailing western disturbance that began on December 27.
The cocktail of dense fog and high levels of pollution that has Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) took the Air Quality Index (AQI) on Sunday to the ‘severe’ category, a spike that stayed on Monday morning also with a 400-plus overall AQI reading in the city as well as Noida and 398 in Ghaziabad, 392 in Gurugram.
Many who were travelling on foggy Delhi-NCR roads on Sunday evening and Monday morning took to social media and shared visuals of the choking fog, with vehicles in front hardly visible.
“What the fog! Seems to be the foggiest day of the season yet. This was at 7:20am in Delhi. Damn! The smog / pollution is surely adding to the poor visibility. Be ready for super delayed flights and trains,” one user wrote on X.
Another user said this is the “thickest fog” they have seen in Delhi for a while.
“Visibility is literally a few meters. The Metro Station is literally 50 meters from our house. We cannot see it at all. The worst part is that this smells acrid and salty. There is pollution in this too,” the user wrote.
The dense fog led to flight and train service disruptions also in Delhi-NCR. Nearly 200 flights to and from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport were cancelled on Monday morning, according to FlightRadar24 data viewed at around 8:45 am.
The situation was expected to worsen through the day due to cascading delays and cancellations — particularly at other impacted airports.
“At 2.30am, visibility fell to 50 metres at Palam and remained so till 8am before increasing marginally to 100 metres. At Safdarjung, visibility remained at 5 metres till 8.30am,” a separate HT report quoted an IMD official.
