Unprecedented Fog and Record-Breaking in the US Recent world climate News
Alerts about the dense fog covered the entire country and set a new record for the third day in a row. The National Weather Service issues these alerts when they expect widespread fog to reduce visibility to a quarter mile or less for at least two hours.
The fog alerts reached from the Canadian border to the Mexican border and extended as far east as the Northeast in the early morning on Thursday. There were also some alerts on the West Coast.
In total, these alerts covered more than 1,500 areas that the National Weather Service gives specific forecasts for, and these areas can be smaller than a county.
According to Daryl Herzmann, a meteorologist and systems analyst at Iowa State University, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were three of the foggiest days in nearly two decades. The data used for analyzing these dense fog alerts goes back to October 2005.
This fog comes after a week of ice, snow, rain, and a significant warming in much of the US, making some places feel more like March than January. The warm air for January is causing rain and melted snow to evaporate, filling the air near the surface with moisture. When the air can’t hold any more moisture, it turns into tiny water droplets that form a visible cloud – and clouds right at the surface are called fog.
Due to human-caused climate change, winter is becoming the fastest-warming season for almost 75% of the US. Warmer temperatures are also a characteristic of El Niño across a large part of the country.
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