A safety warning to all drivers, FOG is here!

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

The best advice we can give to drivers confronted with thick fog is to get off the road as soon as possible. If you can't or won't pull off the road we offer the following advice:

1-Keep your minimum safety gap to three seconds in ideal conditions; with the decreased visibility fog causes, this interval should be increased substantially.
Slow down. Most fog-related traffic fatalities occur because someone was driving too fast and couldn't stop in time to avoid a collision.

2-Make sure that you can be seen. Turn on your fog lights, and use low beams. High beams direct light up into the fog making it difficult for you to see. Low beams direct light down onto the road and help other drivers to see you.

3-If you leave the road, be sure to pull off completely. Turn off your driving lights and turn on your flashers so others know you're there but won't think you are driving on the road.
Always use your defroster and windscreen wipers in foggy conditions to keep the windows clear.

4-Keep an eye on your speedometer and maintain a slow, constant speed.
Remember that other drivers have a limited sight distance and that fog can leave roadways slick. Signal early, and when you use your brakes, don't stomp on them.

Fog is a meteorological phenomenon caused by a supersaturation of the air, so that it can no longer hold water vapor. The water vapor precipitates out into small droplets of condensation, or fog. The processes which form fog are similar to those which make clouds, although fog forms close to the ground, rather than higher up in the atmosphere. Because visibility can be limited in foggy conditions, care should be taken when driving or walking in the fog, especially since it tends to muffle and distort sound, potentially rendering people unaware of hazards.

Fog happens whenever the air reaches a point of extremely high humidity. Most commonly, it happens when the air rapidly cools, causing condensation to form. There are a number of types of fog, named for the conditions which create them. Drivers who are navigating in fog should use low beams or fog lights, rather than high beams, which will simply reflect from the fog and create glare.

Along the shores of oceans and large bodies of water, advection fog happens when moist air from the water passes over the cooler surface of the land. Frequently, warmer weather inland sucks the moist air across the land, creating a thick blanket of fog. Advection fog happens most frequently around the ocean because the salt increases the humidity, and condensation can form at a much lower humidity level around salt.

Another common type of fog is radiation fog. Radiation fog usually occurs after dark, when the Earth radiates heat outwards. As the heat rises, it is cooled, causing saturation conditions and fog. Radiation fog usually clings close to the ground, and disappears by mid-morning, once the day warms up enough to dissipate it. A variation on radiation fog, tule fog, is found in the Central Valley of California. Tule fog happens when cold mountain air sinks into a depression such as the valley at night. Warmer air above it presses the cold air down, causing fog to form and linger for days. This type of fog occurs in the fall and winter, when conditions on the mountains are colder.

A rare type of fog called ice fog can only be formed in extremely cold conditions such as those at the Arctic and Antarctic. When the ambient air temperature is substantially below the freezing point, but still humid, the water droplets which would normally form fog turn into small ice crystals instead. Ice fog can be dangerous to drive in, as the crystals cling to windshields and headlights.