Fog disrupts domestic and international flights

Foggy weather which has disrupted domestic and international flights for the past two days is due to clear by tomorrow, according…

Foggy weather which has disrupted domestic and international flights for the past two days is due to clear by tomorrow, according to Met Eireann.

Poor visibility at Dublin Airport led to delays of two hours on most outbound flights yesterday, Aer Rianta said. Eighteen flights, mostly to and from UK destinations, were cancelled until the afternoon. Several flights were diverted to Cork or Belfast, according to an Aer Rianta spokeswoman.

Aer Lingus reported minor delays on its flights and a couple of cancellations.

Its Tuesday flight to Newark took off yesterday, after being cancelled earlier due to bad weather on the east coast of the US.

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Heavy snows and strong winds there caused major airport shutdowns and power failures and left hundreds of travellers stranded. The snowstorm is believed to have led to the deaths of at least five people. These included four people killed in road accidents in North Carolina and a 58-year-old man who died of a heart attack while shovelling snow in New York city.

Met Eireann's forecaster Mr Michael McAuliffe said the fog which blanketed Dublin, the midlands and the mid-west yesterday would begin to shift today and tonight.

By tomorrow it will give way to windy weather, with rain coming in from the Atlantic, he said. Temperatures will increase once the fog lifts.

In the US, heavy snow forced the closure of federal government offices in Washington yesterday, and most of the north-east of the country was under two feet of snow.

Many airports were closed by snow and winds gusting up to 40 miles an hour.

In New York, the snow led to traffic jams on a number of routes into Manhattan, notably at bridges and tunnels as trucks skidded. North and South Carolina were particularly hard hit, with 166,000 residents left without power.