LAHORE, Jan 3: Thursday was another foggy day in Lahore with extreme chill in the air, especially in the morning.

The biting cold made people to shiver and yearn for cozy places. And the attendance in educational institutions and offices remained thin.

The day’s maximum temperature was 14.7 degrees C but it was 6 degrees C at 10am with dense fog reducing the visibility to a meagre 10 metres and disrupting rail, road and air traffic for hours.

Sunshine in the afternoon gave a little bit warmth to the city being affected by a cold wave for the past one week or so along with major parts of the country. But the impact of the cold and foggy morning continued till sunset.

The chill increased again at around 5pm and it created worse weather conditions by 8pm when fog started engulfing the city, reducing the visibility to 50 metres by 10pm.

Earlier, fog persisted throughout the Wednesday night. It reduced visibility to 20 metres after midnight and the same conditions prevailed till in the morning.

Visibility gradually started improving at 11am (100 metres) and it increased to 1km at noon when the maximum temperature was only 10 degrees.

The night’s minimum temperature was 3.4 degrees C and it increased only to 6 degrees at 10am.

According to the local Met office it remained cold and foggy in many cities in the Punjab, including Jhelum, Sialkot, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Multan. It forecast the same weather conditions in the Punjab during the next 24 hours. It will remain dry and cold in the NWFP and the Northern Areas.

Astore was the coldest place in the country with a -13 degrees minimum temperature, a record in the current winter. The minimum temperature in other cities was; Parachinar and Gilgit (-5 degrees C each), Risalpur and Murree (-3 degree C each), and Islamabad, Kamra, Dir and Saidu Sharif (-1 degree C each). — Intikhab Hanif