Northern Punjab to remain fog-bound

LAHORE, Jan 12: Though the fog cleared in many cities of Punjab on Wednesday it continued to blanket northern parts of the province, especially from Lahore to Rawalpindi.

Because of the dense fog, the Lahore-Islamabad stretch of Motorway (M-II) was closed for traffic on Tuesday night. The Motorway was closed at around 2.30am and was opened at 9.30am after visibility improved.

The Met office said Jhelum, Mangla, Gujranwala, Mandi Bahauddin, Sialkot, Multan, Jhang, Nawabshah, Sukkur and Skardu remained fog-bound.

Day time temperatures in almost all cities in Punjab improved because of the early vanishing of fog and a bright sunshine afterwards.

The minimum temperature in Lahore on Tuesday night was 1 degree Celsius and the maximum 19 degrees Celsius.

The Met Office expected the fog to clear from the plains of the country in view of the arrival of a fresh westerly wave that was likely to give rain and snowfall over the hills of north Punjab (Rawalpindi Division), upper Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir on Thursday and Friday. FORECAST REVISED:

Meanwhile, the Meteorological Department on Wednesday revised its winter rain forecast.

It said the La Nia phenomenon, causing abnormally low precipitation with low temperatures in Pakistan so far, was still prevailing and expected to continue well into the Northern Hemisphere during winter/spring 2011, as predicted by most of the global models.

As per available global data, there were 80 per cent chances that the winter rainfall from January to March 2011, would be below normal (-20 per cent) in the country.

The Met department expected largely below normal rainfall in January, slightly below normal rain in February and nearly normal rain in March.

The normal rainfall in January-March for Pakistan is 70.5mm.

The department had in December forecast nearly normal rainfall this winter.