thoughtful
my_partner_doug and I have observed. Tonight is the second night it's happened. Imagine a fog, but not an ordinary whitish fog that stops light from traveling by reflecting and scattering it. This is a dusky fog that seems to swallow light. It isn't visible hanging in the air, nor does it travel in wisps, as an ordinary fog tends to do. It just blots things out, far more than would an ordinary fog of comparable density (as contrasted with a true pea-soup fog which can reduce visibility to zero). It doesn't really look like fog except that it makes the world extremely dark. No stars, no moon. Almost no electric lights visible anywhere, and normally we can see Charleston, Mattoon, a bunch of neighbors, and a bunch of red warning lights on towers from here. So this time, we went out and drove around in it. There was almost no difference between hi-beam and low-beam headlights, whereas in ordinary fog, hi-beams tend to white-out the view. There was almost no side-scatter or back-scatter of light as in an ordinary fog; the light was just swallowed up. The coronas around lights were smaller where visible at all. Oddly, at short to medium range, the yellow-orange of sodium vapor lights was more illuminating than the blue-white of the other security lights; ordinarily, the blue ones illuminate more. But at long distances, the ruddy lights faded out sooner than the bluish ones, as would be expected.
We also discovered that the effect was variable over distance. Moving south and then east into Charleston, it started to fade toward a normal fog, and by the time we got into town, it was almost completely normal fog. When we got out there, the sound carriage was normal, whereas the charcoal fog seems to have more of a muffling effect than a normal fog of similar density. Moving north out of town along a different road, the dusky effect gradually returned, and moving west again, we went back into the charcoal fog. There was one notably thinner patch where it was closer to normal fog again, before going back to charcoal. When we got home, it was almost as solidly dark as when we left, just slightly thinner. So the blanketing effect of charcoal fog may be shaped similar to ordinary fog, and it may move over the landscape like clouds or fogbanks.
Why "demonic" charcoal fog? It has a darker flavor of energy. It's creepy. I'm keeping it mind for horror writing sometime.
But I love being an empiricist and going out to explore weird new phenomena.
January 11 2013, 01:48:20 UTC 8 years ago
Well...
January 11 2013, 01:52:38 UTC 8 years ago
Re: Well...
January 11 2013, 02:13:05 UTC 8 years ago
Re: Well...
January 11 2013, 02:34:37 UTC 8 years ago
* we've lived here a long time, this phenomenon has not been observed here before (or elsewhere), and now it's shown up twice in short succession.
* no, there's not much smog potential. We're in a rural area. People do burn leaves or corn stover or firewood. But I know what that smells like, nobody seemed to be doing any of that anywhere near, and it's rare for that to be widespread enough to have more than microlocal effect.
I had wondered if it might be some kind of dust getting into the air, but it's been wet recently. The first time had been drier and the effect was stronger.
Re: Well...
January 11 2013, 02:41:23 UTC 8 years ago
Re: Well...
January 11 2013, 02:47:36 UTC 8 years ago
Thank you!
Re: Well...
January 11 2013, 02:51:03 UTC 8 years ago
Re: Well...
8 years ago
Re: Well...
8 years ago
Re: Well...
8 years ago
January 11 2013, 11:19:23 UTC 8 years ago
Either that, or what you're seeing is fog contaminated by ash or wind-blown dust/dirt.
January 11 2013, 13:16:35 UTC 8 years ago
so, yeah, it's more likely ash or smoke entangled in fog.
In any case, going out into it is not the best idea,
as smoke and ash are more likely than not to be toxic to some degree.
Of course, it may not be thoughtful enough to go around the house,
so it may not matter whether one stays in or not.
Hmm...
January 11 2013, 21:27:40 UTC 8 years ago
I'm wondering about wildfire ash or dust; we have had more dust activity in recent years. It may not be locally sourced. I shall keep an eye out for more data.
January 11 2013, 16:23:44 UTC 8 years ago
Well...
January 11 2013, 18:17:54 UTC 8 years ago
January 12 2013, 03:04:36 UTC 8 years ago
January 12 2013, 04:08:49 UTC 8 years ago
January 12 2013, 04:27:09 UTC 8 years ago
I got to the Seattle area in early November, 1999. It was grey, and it rained, and it rained some more, and there were sun breaks, and it would rain some more.. and then about mid-December, it *stopped*.
A big damn ridge of high pressure moved on top of us and stopped. When you're in the middle of high pressure, the air isn't moving much laterally, it's moving *down*. Anything beneath it - soot, moisture, car fumes - is *trapped*, and can't go anywhere. As the sun goes down, this thick, oppressive fog forms. Just like you said, it muffles sound, and doesn't backscatter like normal fog does. It just sort of eats them for dinner.
One difference, though. You said your fog didn't smell much. This *stank*, of diesel fumes and soot and who knows what all. It would come in about 4, and wouldn't burn off until after 10 the next morning. Played merry hell with the interstate commuters; thankfully I wasn't one of them.
I was born and bred a Southerner, raised to think that rain was bad weather. But after two weeks of this stinky stuff, on New Years' Eve, I went out on my back deck and I said "Hot damn, it's rain.... *oh*.... " as the gentle rain fell down and flushed the stinky sky of its plague. The new low pressure pattern brought the moisture, and warmer air, in from the sea, and gave Seattle its typical clean, verdant liquid sunshine.
And how, Dr. Strangelove-like, I learnt to stop worrying and love the rain.
Our premier weather-guesser here is calling for another massive high-pressure ridge, crystal-clear days and cold foggy nights. I'm not looking forward to it.
Looking at your present situation... is one of the weirdest formations I've seen.. you're stuck in a warmish air mass between a colder one and a warmer one, and a HUGE jet stream aloft... no idea why the weird fog; I'd expect you to have enough wind to blow it out, but you don't... V. strange. But then we should give it welcome... for there are stranger things than even our philosophies can dream. :)