Fog!

[altivo]

24 hours of fog...

It started Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning the visibility was less than 1/8 mile. Morning fog is not too unusual here in the spring, but in midwinter it is odd. And it didn't go away. Driving to work at noon, visibility was still poor. All afternoon, things kept deteriorating until you could only see about ten meters looking out any window.

Wednesday is my day to stay until closing and shut everything down at 8 pm. But at 4 o'clock the evening staff started coming in and saying how bad conditions were, and about 4:30 a freak storm passed through with thunder, lightning, and hail. This is not typical January weather in our area, it's more like April or May. The temperature was up to 61 F. compared to a normal daytime high of 29 F. (Yes, favouritewindow, it is normal for us to stay below freezing day and night in January.) At about 4:50 my boss started to look for nearby parttimers who could cover the evening shift, because she wanted to send me home before it was totally dark out. The fog was getting even worse.

Someone volunteered to stay if they could run home and get supper. Then she called from home and said that another staff member and I, who both live farthest away, should leave immediately. And right then the weather alarm sounded with another severe storm warning. I was told to go home now, so I did.

What a strange and eerie trip that was. It was like being in an airplane that was flying in and out of dense clouds. I could never see more than 100 feet, and often less than 50. That's very dangerous, especially in the dark, and it was pitch dark by then. Sometimes I couldn't even see the edges of the pavement and found myself driving on the wrong side of the road when things would clear momentarily. Needless to say, I was traveling very slowly, often only 10 or 15 mph. The distance to be covered between the library and the farm is about 16 miles, and the last 5 are over township roads that have no reflective striping. That was where it got really spooky. There were no other vehicles, and few lights along the way.

When I reached home, partner was still finishing up evening animal chores. The fog was so thick that you couldn't see the big barn from the house windows (distance is about 100 feet) and the inside of the barn was full of fog too. We have bright overhead lights in there, about 6 kilowatts of lighting power, and the fog was very obvious. The horses and sheep were unsettled by it too. After everything was buttoned up and shut down, two more waves of thunderstorms passed through, with heavy rain and lightning. We had 12 inches of snow on the ground Monday, but almost all has melted now and there's a lot of standing water. As I write, the temperature is still well above freezing, and it is too dark to tell what has happened outside...

Comments

[doco.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of my childhood spent close to the North Sea. Under certain conditions, we would get that very dense fog too ( I guess the updraft caused by the sea/land temperature differences forced the fog up land ), and it'd stay for nearly as long as two days..I remember the day in 11th grade where the school bus took one hour for what was maybe a six or seven mile trip, and in the city the city buses were all running with a twenty-minute delay..usually, after such a weather period, storm tides would follow immediately.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is a very similar phenomenon. Last week's heavy snow came in on northwesterly winds that shifted to northeast. The fog rode in on a warm southerly wind that brought very unseasonable warm air, and that moisture being chilled by all the snow and frozen ground produced the fog I would expect. Then the very cold air from the north came in, and the interface between the two produced cold front thunderstorms such as we commonly see in summer here but almost never in winter.

Today's snow is accompanied by a north wind and we expect the temperature to drop to below zero F. (perhaps as low as -20 C.) tonight. That's a drop of 66 degrees F. or 35 degrees C. in one 24 hour period.