Demonic Charcoal Fog

[ysabetwordsmith]

There's a new weather phenomenon that my_partner_doug and I have observed.  Tonight is the second night it's happened.  Imagine a fog, but not an ordinary whitish fog that stops light from traveling by reflecting and scattering it.  This is a dusky fog that seems to swallow  light.  It isn't visible hanging in the air, nor does it travel in wisps, as an ordinary fog tends to do.  It just blots things out, far more than would an ordinary fog of comparable density (as contrasted with a true pea-soup fog which can reduce visibility to zero).  It doesn't really look like fog except that it makes the world extremely dark.  No stars, no moon.  Almost no electric lights visible anywhere, and normally we can see Charleston, Mattoon, a bunch of neighbors, and a bunch of red warning lights on towers from here. 

So this time, we went out and drove around in it.  There was almost no difference between hi-beam and low-beam headlights, whereas in ordinary fog, hi-beams tend to white-out the view.  There was almost no side-scatter or back-scatter of light as in an ordinary fog; the light was just swallowed up.  The coronas around lights were smaller where visible at all.  Oddly, at short to medium range, the yellow-orange of sodium vapor lights was more illuminating than the blue-white of the other security lights; ordinarily, the blue ones illuminate more.  But at long distances, the ruddy lights faded out sooner than the bluish ones, as would be expected.

We also discovered that the effect was variable over distance.  Moving south and then east into Charleston, it started to fade toward a normal fog, and by the time we got into town, it was almost completely normal fog.  When we got out there, the sound carriage was normal, whereas the charcoal fog seems to have more of a muffling effect than a normal fog of similar density.  Moving north out of town along a different road, the dusky effect gradually returned, and moving west again, we went back into the charcoal fog.  There was one notably thinner patch where it was closer to normal fog again, before going back to charcoal.  When we got home, it was almost as solidly dark as when we left, just slightly thinner.  So the blanketing effect of charcoal fog may be shaped similar to ordinary fog, and it may move over the landscape like clouds or fogbanks.

Why "demonic" charcoal fog?  It has a darker flavor of energy.  It's creepy.  I'm keeping it mind for horror writing sometime.

But I love being an empiricist and going out to explore weird new phenomena.

Comments

[rix_scaedu]

Did it smell of smoke or anythng else?

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

It doesn't smell of smoke. It does smell different than ordinary fog, which smells wet. This hardly smells wet at all, it's more earthy, darker, almost dusty. *ponder* Maybe just a little like art-supply charcoal instead of campfire charcoal? Like carbon, but not like burning.

Re: Well...

[rix_scaedu]

I don't know what your area is like in terms of fireplaces, etc but could it have been some sort of smog?

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I thought of that, because there are some similarities; it reminds me of the coal-fog that London used to have. However ...
* we've lived here a long time, this phenomenon has not been observed here before (or elsewhere), and now it's shown up twice in short succession.
* no, there's not much smog potential. We're in a rural area. People do burn leaves or corn stover or firewood. But I know what that smells like, nobody seemed to be doing any of that anywhere near, and it's rare for that to be widespread enough to have more than microlocal effect.

I had wondered if it might be some kind of dust getting into the air, but it's been wet recently. The first time had been drier and the effect was stronger.

Re: Well...

[rix_scaedu]

In that case I'm all out of suggestions, unless it's moved in with an air mass from somewhere else.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

AH! Now that, I hadn't really thought of. Air can move diffuse matter quite a long distance, sometimes in fairly compact bundles. There were wildfires all summer. Possibly some carbon from that is somehow raining out, or from some other source. Certainly the overall carbon in the atmosphere is rising, hence global warming problems. That would also account for the energy shift.

Thank you!

Re: Well...

[rix_scaedu]

Air movement's on my mind at the moment. We're getting heat from central Australia by the movement of air masses and that's building up because of a late monsoon season in the north and (at least there was) an anticyclone in the south. Places are nudging temperature records that have stood since the 1920s.

Re: Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I heard about the issue with not being able to pump petrol because it would evaporate. O_O

Re: Well...

[rix_scaedu]

I think that was Oonadatta? (I'm sure I've left vowels out of that.) It's been much hotter there than here. I'm on the eastern coastal fringe so it's been nothing like that - only one day over 40C so far and hopefully no more.

Re: Well...

[rix_scaedu]

I spoke too soon. Tomorrow's predicted top has been raised to 42C. Maybe we won't get there?

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Odd, and creepy... Fog looks white due to back-scatter, light being internally refracted and thrown back. Freezing fog sometimes goes dark because if forms crystals of the right size they fail to back scatter and the light is swallowed by the mass of them. [it's a complex interplay of refraction and interference.]

Either that, or what you're seeing is fog contaminated by ash or wind-blown dust/dirt.

[msstacy13.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Freezing fog would leave ice on the roads,
so, yeah, it's more likely ash or smoke entangled in fog.
In any case, going out into it is not the best idea,
as smoke and ash are more likely than not to be toxic to some degree.
Of course, it may not be thoughtful enough to go around the house,
so it may not matter whether one stays in or not.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Frozen fog is ... a possibility. I think it's not the highest because this happens in warmish weather.

I'm wondering about wildfire ash or dust; we have had more dust activity in recent years. It may not be locally sourced. I shall keep an eye out for more data.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'd be rather careful around strange fogs, because chemical releases can create them, and they can be toxic, even deadly.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I did think of that, and considered not going out at all. But it seemed not to have most of the warning signs for that sort of thing. Last night there was even a possum wandering around in it. My general inclination is not to go out in it, but I'm also drawn to explore weird phenomena.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Weird and spooky!

[zianuray.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's the Darkness from Monster House?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I've encountered something similar.

I got to the Seattle area in early November, 1999. It was grey, and it rained, and it rained some more, and there were sun breaks, and it would rain some more.. and then about mid-December, it *stopped*.

A big damn ridge of high pressure moved on top of us and stopped. When you're in the middle of high pressure, the air isn't moving much laterally, it's moving *down*. Anything beneath it - soot, moisture, car fumes - is *trapped*, and can't go anywhere. As the sun goes down, this thick, oppressive fog forms. Just like you said, it muffles sound, and doesn't backscatter like normal fog does. It just sort of eats them for dinner.

One difference, though. You said your fog didn't smell much. This *stank*, of diesel fumes and soot and who knows what all. It would come in about 4, and wouldn't burn off until after 10 the next morning. Played merry hell with the interstate commuters; thankfully I wasn't one of them.

I was born and bred a Southerner, raised to think that rain was bad weather. But after two weeks of this stinky stuff, on New Years' Eve, I went out on my back deck and I said "Hot damn, it's rain.... *oh*.... " as the gentle rain fell down and flushed the stinky sky of its plague. The new low pressure pattern brought the moisture, and warmer air, in from the sea, and gave Seattle its typical clean, verdant liquid sunshine.

And how, Dr. Strangelove-like, I learnt to stop worrying and love the rain.

Our premier weather-guesser here is calling for another massive high-pressure ridge, crystal-clear days and cold foggy nights. I'm not looking forward to it.

Looking at your present situation... is one of the weirdest formations I've seen.. you're stuck in a warmish air mass between a colder one and a warmer one, and a HUGE jet stream aloft... no idea why the weird fog; I'd expect you to have enough wind to blow it out, but you don't... V. strange. But then we should give it welcome... for there are stranger things than even our philosophies can dream. :)