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A 400-mile stretch of California’s Central Valley has been shrouded in an unusually persistent fog for weeks, prompting both scientific explanation and online speculation about its composition.
Foggy Mystery: What’s Really in California’s Tule Fog?
Social media is buzzing with concerns about the dense fog,but experts say the culprit is likely mundane air pollution,not something more sinister.
- The Central valley’s prolonged fog is due to a combination of early wet season, cold temperatures, and a stable high-pressure system.
- Social media users are reporting unusual consistency and particles in the fog, raising concerns about its composition.
- scientists attribute the fog’s particulate matter to common air pollutants found in the Central Valley,including agricultural runoff,industry emissions,and vehicle exhaust.
- While inhalation risk is relatively low due to droplet size, washing produce and outdoor surfaces is advised to avoid ingestion of pollutants.
The recent stretch of prolonged cloud cover in California’s Central Valley has been remarkable. Scientists attribute the prolonged cloud cover to an early wet season, cold temperatures, and a stable high-pressure system. However, a stroll through platforms like X, Instagram, and TikTok reveals a different narrative-one filled with questions and concerns about the fog’s unusual characteristics.
Users are reporting a strange consistency to the fog and the presence of black and white particles that seem out of the ordinary. some are dubbing it “mysterious” and highlighting the term “radiation fog,” a scientific descriptor for this type of natural fog event that carries no implication of radioactivity.
One X user, with the handle Wall Street Apes, posted a video of a man from Northern California wiping his finger across condensation on his truck’s grill. His finger emerged coated in a white substance. “What is this s- right here?” the man exclaimed in the video, zooming in on his finger.”There’s something in the fog that I can’t explain… Check y’all… y’all crazy… What’s going on? They got asbestos in there.”
Another user, @wesleybrennan87, shared a photo of airplane contrails intersecting through a temporary break in the fog, commenting, “For anyone following the dense Tule (Radiation) fog in the california Valley, it lifted for a moment today, just to see they’ve been pretty active over our heads…”
scientists confirm that the fog does contain particulate matter, but they say its composition is disappointingly ordinary. The Central Valley consistently ranks among the areas with the worst air pollution in the country, and “fog is highly susceptible to pollutants,” explained Peter Weiss-Penzias, a fog researcher at UC Santa Cruz.
Fog droplets have a large surface area and can linger in the air for days or even weeks, absorbing a disproportionate amount of gases and particles-essentially, pollutants.
Weiss-Penzias, who hasn’t analyzed the current Central Valley fog event, said it’s easy to imagine what might be present in the droplets. “It might very well be a whole alphabet soup of different things. with all the agriculture in this area, industry, automobiles, wood smoke, there’s a whole bunch” of potential contributors, he said.
Reports of the fog becoming a gelatinous substance when left to settle are also not surprising, considering the airborne biological material-fungal spores, nutrients, and algae-that can adhere to the water droplets, he added.
The primary route of exposure to this material is inhalation, but the fog droplets are relatively large, meaning they don’t penetrate deep into the lungs like the fine particulate matter inhaled on clear days. However, ingestion is a greater concern, as the fog settles on plants and open water sources. Therefore, washing vegetables and anything left outdoors before consumption is advised.
Dennis baldocchi, a UC Berkeley fog researcher, concurred with Weiss-Penzias’ assessment. He predicted that an approaching storm system this weekend would likely dissipate the fog, lifting its chilly, dirty veil from the valley. However, he cautioned that if a high-pressure system returns in the coming weeks, the region could once again find itself enveloped in
