I’ve lived with fog most of my life. Growing up in York, Pennsylvania, which is located in a valley surrounded on all sides by fairly high hills, many were the mornings my friends and I walked to school unable to see more than a few feet ahead of us. And because York was a factory town, what we encountered was more smog than fog. 

 

By Bill Lawyer   

I’ve lived with fog most of my life. Growing up in York, Pennsylvania, which is located in a valley surrounded on all sides by fairly high hills, many were the mornings my friends and I walked to school unable to see more than a few feet ahead of us. And because York was a factory town, what we encountered was more smog than fog.  

I remember the first time, when I was in high school, going out on a foggy morning run up the hill to York’s reservoir, and realizing as I got to the top that the sun was shining and the sky was blue up there. Needless to say, at that time I hadn’t yet flown in an airplane. I was amazed that it looked as though someone had whipped up egg whites into a fluffy foam — and dumped them into the valley below.  

Even now, I am still fascinated by early morning encounters with fog at Rye Town Park,  Playland, and the Blind Brook as it flows through the marshes by the old Milton cemeteries.  

The City of White Plains, by the way, got its name from the native American term for the area, “white marshes”.  That was because the Bronx River and its tributaries there would frequently create a mass of steam rising from the water and form a “white-out”.  

In my commuting days across the county to Greenburgh Nature Center, I didn’t think so kindly about fog, especially because some drivers seemed obsessed with driving at the same speed as on a clear day. I had to draw on all the defensive driving skills I could muster when the fog was at its thickest.

But nowadays, I can savor the mystery and muffling effects of the fog as the sun comes up behind Long Island, casting streaks of pink and yellow light into the mist. The trees in Rye Town Park loom as dark masses in the distance, and fence railings by the beach seem to vanish before my very eyes.  

Being a nature and environmental educator, I can appreciate the scientific, meteorological factors that lead to the formation of fog, while still enjoying the ways that it changes our perception of the world around it.  

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breaks down fog into six main types, based on how it is formed and what it does: radiation, advection, upslope, ice, freezing, and evaporating/mixing. (As far as I know, by the way, the Eskimos don’t have hundreds of words for fog.)  

Around here, radiation and advection are the most common varieties, and ice and freezing the least common.  

Radiation fog forms at night under clear skies with calm winds when heat absorbed by the earth’s surface during the day is radiated into space. As the earth’s surface continues to cool, moist air near the ground causes the humidity to reach 100, which creates fog. Radiation fog varies in depth from 3 to about 1,000 feet and is always found at ground level and usually stationary. Valley fog such as I encountered in my childhood is this type. And, it can reduce visibility to near zero at times, making driving hazardous.  

What happens with visibility is that the further away objects are, the more the thick fog filters them from our perception, so that trees in Rye Town Park, for example, become lighter and lighter until they disappear.  

In the same way, fog can muffle sounds. Scientists explain that fog particles in the air are not touching and have a significant mass. As sound waves move through the misty air, energy is absorbed by the particles of moisture. Absorption of the energy by the moving particles reduces the energy in the sound wave, hence reducing the volume and muffling the sound.

But that doesn’t make the sound of Long Island Sound’s foghorns any less mournful or mysterious.  

The next time you wake up on a foggy morning, take a few minutes to enjoy its artistic effect on your view, right in your backyard.