3/28/2023 0 Comments Noaa weather santa cruz audio![]() ![]() It is there one moment and gone the next.Įarly on a late-spring morning, Peter Weiss, a scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and three of his students, calling themselves “the fog squad,” were erecting fog catchers. It arrives like a whisper and disappears like a magic trick. Sometimes it shrouds the top of the bridge’s towers and the airspace above, blinding pilots. Sometimes it settles about 200 feet higher, blinding drivers. ![]() Sometimes a thin layer hugs the water below the Golden Gate Bridge, blinding mariners. But fog is movement in three dimensions, dipping and rising, forming and disappearing. Most will say that fog is a cloud that touches the ground, which sounds simple enough. There is not even a practical definition of it. Unlike temperature, precipitation, humidity or wind, there is no reliable gauge for it. However, the reasons aren’t clear.įog may be the most difficult meteorological phenomenon to capture, calculate and predict. The general consensus among the small cadre of scientists who study coastal fog is that it is decreasing, not just in California, but around the world. Which is why a decrease in California’s coastal fog, or the prospect of it disappearing entirely one day, is not a sunny proposition, particularly in and around San Francisco Bay. It might even be an untapped resource in California’s growing anxiety over water. It enriches the area’s cultural identity. But it does more than astonish ill-prepared tourists and dazzle photographers and poets. In June, July and August, as most of the Northern Hemisphere, and most of California, feels the full force of summer heat, the average daily high in San Francisco is below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 21 Celsius, coolest of any major city in the continental United States.įog is a companion, part of the rhythm of summertime, flitting in and out of lives like a family member. It is why, until recently, few people worried about wildfires along the coast. Summer fog is why the mighty coastal redwoods grow where they do, surviving California’s dry season thanks to refreshing gulps of cold, wet air. It is why fewer than half of Bay Area residents have air-conditioning, and partly why they use less water than most Americans. It is why realtors talk about neighborhood fog patterns as much as square footage and schools. Millions are affected by it, if only by the invisible cool breezes that presage the fog’s arrival.įog is why one neighborhood is notoriously chilly, another is surprisingly sunny, and the airport is where it is. Fog pours through the Golden Gate and crawls up and down the wrinkled hills of the city and the nearby coast. While coastal fog isn’t unique to the California coast, few places in the world are so deeply associated with the ethereal movements and cooling spritz of fog’s peek-a-boo routine. ![]() Rachel Clemesha, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, U.C. The bridge’s five fog horns went unused, for now.Ī marine layer of low cloud typically hugs the California coast and moves north in summer, causing what’s known as “June Gloom” in Los Angeles and then “Fogust” in San Francisco. The day remained gloriously sunny, unusually hot and fog-free, the kind of San Francisco summer’s day that some fear is becoming more frequent. Just then, a slight breeze, an invisible puff of chill, the kind you might get by opening the freezer door. He had a hunch it would stay away, defying the familiar summertime cycle. ![]() That day on the bridge, computer models predicted the fog would push through the Golden Gate in an hour or two. Quantifying the changes and determining possible causes, including global warming, is climatology’s version of chasing ghosts. But understanding fog is one of science’s toughest tricks. The ecological, economic and social effects of fog are profound, perhaps no more than in Northern California. One of the Golden Gate Bridge’s five foghorns, silent in the sunlight. ![]()
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