Not flying blind: Dense fog in central Israel briefly shutters airport

Planes grounded in Tel Aviv for over an hour, arriving flight redirected to Cyprus

Dense fog continued to envelop central Israel on Monday morning, grounding planes at Ben Gurion Airport and redirecting flights that were planning to land in Tel Aviv.

A spokesperson for the Israel Airport Authority said a cargo flight was forced to take an alternate route and land in Larnaca, Cyprus, while departing flights were delayed.

The airport reopened and flights resumed after about an hour.

The eerie mistiness was especially heavy in Tel Aviv.

The fog was due to air flowing inland from the sea, causing humidity to rise on the coastal plain and other areas.

The weather phenomenon, whose impact was first felt in Israel on Sunday, can persist as late as noon and is expected to return for the next few days, reducing visibility across swaths of the country including the coast and northern Negev.

The weather is different from the yellow-tinged haze caused by dust in the air, which sometimes drifts in, including during two sandstorms that blanketed the country in 2015 that were the worst since modern Israel’s establishment in 1948.

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