LAHORE: Thick fog blanketed Lahore and several other cities in central and northeast Punjab on Thursday and the Met department said it would persist in the days to come.

Motorway was closed from Lahore to Sialkot and Lahore to Faisalabad from 4am to 11am after dense fog reduced visibility to nil, making traveling highly dangerous.

The National Highway also remained fog-bound from Gujranwala to Kasur and Pattoki.

The Met department said fog had started to develop because of persistent dry weather. The condition in India ---- was worse as it was experiencing dense fog in Punjab, Delhi, Lucknow, Allahabad and even in Bengal.

It said here Pindi Bhattian, Gujranwala, Ghakhar, Noorpur Thal, Jauharabad, Bhakkar and Faisalabad were affected by dense fog.

In Lahore, the fog developed in the early hours of Thursday and persisted till 10am. It shielded sun in the meantime and reduced visibility to a great extent. As a result, traveling in the morning rush hour was difficult, especially for the motorcyclists.

The Met department said thick fog will again develop on Thursday night and Friday morning.

A westerly wave is likely to give rain and snowfall from Saturday to Monday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. There were also chances of scattered rain in Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Lahore and Faisalabad during this period.

Meanwhile, winter has started intensifying over the upper parts of the country. The minimum temperature in Skardu was -6 degrees C, in Gupis and Hunza-4 and in Gilgit-2 degrees Celsius.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016