By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Dec. 12: Thick fog and cold waves blanketed most parts of the Terai region after a large amount of vaporised air entered Nepal from the southern Arabian Sea since Friday owing to the influence of westerly winds.
According to meteorologists, the western, middle and eastern parts of the Terai region were particularly enveloped in thick fog and mist Friday.
Even in the Kathmandu Valley, the fog disrupted domestic and international flights at Tribhuvan International Airport from 7:00 am on Friday pertaining to low visibility, as per Deo Chandra Lal Karna, Officiating General Manager at the airport.
"It has been foggy in the Kathmandu Valley since Friday morning. Visibility of the airport this morning was at just 100 metres,” GM Karna told The Rising Nepal.
While flights to the hilly and Terai regions of the country were affected as a result of low visibility, the situation improved after 10:00 am, he said.
Only an international aircraft of Himalayan Airlines from Kunming, China, landed at the international airport before 6:30 am today, he informed, after which no other international flight could land due to the lingering fog.
According to Karna, normally 1,500 metres of visibility is required to land an international flight. Similarly, there are different visibilities for domestic flights according to the nature of the aircraft.
Generally, domestic aircraft flying under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) need one-and-a-half kilometres of visibility to fly and three-kilometres of landing visibility.
He said that another Himalayan Airlines approaching the TIA had to be diverted to Dhaka that was coming from Malaysia, which landed at Kathmandu only after 10:00 pm.
According to Karna, nine international flights will make their departure from Kathmandu and 16 will land, while 88 domestic flights are scheduled to land and take off until Friday evening.
According to senior Meteorologist Min Kumar Aryal, the thick foggy situation will gradually improve in most parts of the Terai region as well as in Kathmandu in the afternoon. As the sun does not shine well in foggy places, the Forecasting Division requested to take precautionary measures against cold and its risk while conducting the flight.
According to him, Dhangadhi recorded 2,000 metres of visibility, Nepalgunj recorded 3,000, Bhairahawa 600, Simara 800, with both Janakpur and Biratnagr reporting 500 metres on Friday morning.
Meteorologist Sujan Subedi at Meteorological Forecasting Division said that weather across the country for the next three days will be partly-to-generally cloudy with a chance of snowfall in high mountainous regions and light rainfall in one or two places of the hilly region.