It's the Fog! Run Away!

Winter on the central Gulf Coast can be quite confusing. Last week was the coldest it’s been in a while. Today, it was up in the high sixties, and tomorrow it’s expected to be in the seventies. It’s no wonder that, whenever I look at the flu map for the United States, Florida (of all places) tends to have a high number of sufferers. With temperatures fluctuating by thirty to forty degrees between highs and lows on a regular basis, I’m surprised that more people aren’t sick.

Of course, illness isn’t the only thing that comes with wild temperature swings. In the summer, our relative humidity is usually at eighty percent or higher. In the winter, it drops to around thirty percent on a cold day and fifty to sixty percent on a warmer day like today. So, what happens when temperatures drop quickly in a humid area?

Fog. Heavy fog.

I just returned from dinner, and I’m glad I didn’t have a problem. There were times when the road seemed to disappear in clouds. I went for a walk and discovered that my visibility was somewhere around a quarter mile. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen though. There is a road near my parents’ house that I’ve seen fog so thick, I nearly came to a stop trying to pick my way through it. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen too often.

So, when I head home tonight from work, I hope there’s no one crossing my path on my short drive. I might not see them if it’s too foggy.