In my never ending quest to acculturate you all with life in the Central Valley, I would be remiss if I did not include one of the curiosities the Valley is known for. The Vally has some pretty uniqe topography, sitting between two mountain ranges (who’da thunk?), the air is fed moisture by two large bodies of water: the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Delta (I’m not sure if it’s called that, but it’s up there and it’s wet). The Valley is also technically a desert so moisture doesn’t stay in the ground well (no pun intended) and water must be constantly irrigated so you all can be fat. It must also be known that it is hardly ever windy or even breezy. Zephyr is a common word out here. All these factors come together to produce some of the thickest fog found anywhere in the world.
And I’m not talking about San Francisco fog type fog either, that stuff is bathroom steam compared to what we get. The fog is so thick the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) literally set aside an entire classification for fog in the Central Valley, calling it “tule fog”, named after the Tule (too-lee) grass that’s only found out here. Visibility in this fog is usually less than 50 feet, though it’s not uncommon to be unable to see more than 10 feet. And weirdest of all, it comes in bands, so in one place you can see a 100 feet no problem, but get passed that and you can’t see 15, only to see 100 again shortly after.
As a kid I remember going to the bus stop and being unable to see my front door from the sidewalk directly in front of our house (and we had a small house). At recess we couldn’t play hide ‘n’ seek because we’d all just go and stand in the middle of the playground and the poor schmuck couldn’t see us. You’ve heard of being unable to drive fast in fog? In our fog you can’t even jog briskly. While other schools had snow days or rain days or whatever, we had fog days. All the local radio stations would broadcast which bus routes were delayed because of the fog and school wouldn’t start until 11 or 12 when it would burn off enough to see a block away.
# posted by Mike @ 1:28 PM
