Fog

R

retro

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15 Year Club Well Known
Let me introduce you to something called Tule Fog..

Tule Fog is a thick ground fog that settles in the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley areas of California's Great Central Valley. Tule fog forms during the late fall and winter (California's rainy season) after the first significant rainfall. The official time frame for tule fog to form is from November 1 to March 31. This phenomenon is named after the tule grass wetlands (tulares) of the Central Valley. Accidents caused by the tule fog are the leading cause of weather-related casualties in California.
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It looks something like this

tulefog-1.jpg

Visibility in tule fog is usually less than an eighth of a mile (about 600 feet or 200 meters), but can be as little as a foot (about 30 cm.) Visibility can vary rapidly; in only a few feet visibility can go from 10 feet to near zero.

The variability in visibility is the cause of many chain-reaction pile-ups on roads and freeways. In one such accident on Interstate 5 near Elk Grove south of Sacramento, 25 cars and 12 big-rig trucks collided inside a fog bank in December 1997. Five people died and 28 were injured. In February 2002, two people were killed in an 80-plus car pile-up on State Route 99 between Kingsburg and Selma. The visibility at the time of the accident was zero. On the morning of November 3, 2007, heavy tule fog caused a massive pile-up that included 108 passenger vehicles and 18 big rig trucks on Northbound State Route 99 between Fowler and Fresno. Visibility was cut to about 200 feet at the time of the accident. There were two fatalities and 39 injuries in the crash
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The bolded accident above... my parents were nearly involved in the first accident that started it all. They missed being hit by a big rig truck by about five feet. They didn't realize it until later on in the day when they were on their way back from getting rid of stuff at my grandma's house in Tracy.

I post all of this because this is probably the worst year for it since 2007, and I'm just waiting for another accident like one of the above listed ones. About 80% of the flights scheduled in and out of Fresno for the last week have been cancelled.

On my way to work this morning, I could see about about 300-400 feet in front of me. When I came back from working late last night, it was actually a little worse than that. So, imagine the picture I posted, and the visibility being slightly worse... that's what we have to deal with in bad fog years here.

Yay fog...
 
Oh Retro, you should have seen me this morning, talking fog. I lost my glasses while on vacation a week ago, they are strictly for driving but I do need them if it's not a sunny, clear day. I have gone in for a replacement, but it will be another week to ten days before they arrive.

I have prescription SUNGLASSES, only. Have you ever tried to drive in the dark, in thick, thick fog with sunglasses! Hellsbells if I hadn't been driving like a snail I would have hit some moron in all black clothes who was walking w/o looking!
 
Wow! I've driven in some pretty thick fog before..... slowly mind you. But you can be right on top of another vehicle before you realize it. Scary stuff there in CA though.
 
Oh, and that picture was about average fog in a year like this... often times my visibility is about 5-10 feet in front of my car if I'm lucky. I can deal with anything past 50 feet visibility, but I pretty much refuse to drive when it's foggier than that unless I absolutely have to. I have a feeling we're going to have a couple of those days this year, I'll try to remember to take some pictures when that happens.
 
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