4 Fog Facts to Fool Friends and Flummox Family

Fog bedevils, obscures, sustains, and sometimes kills. It can arise and envelop a landscape in minutes, transforming the familiar into the foreign before unbelieving eyes.

Its nature seeps into our language: brain fog, fogging, befogged.

Its variety dazzles: advection, radiation, tule, upslope, warm, supercooled.

Its very commonness reassures: fog in one form or another occurs almost everywhere and, whether we welcome it or curse it, we certainly know it.

Yet what most of us know about fog could barely moisten a paper towel. Here are four fog facts that will clear the air, condense your knowledge, and de-mystify this amazing aerosol.

FIDO was more than a dog

While the memory of the loyal dog named FIDO lingers in our lexicon, World War II Allied pilots returning from bombing strikes over Nazi-occupied Europe cherished the acronym for other reasons. FIDO, Fog Investigations Dispersal Of, was a brute force heating method that deployed oil burners along both sides of a runway when dense fog made landing dangerous. In all, FIDO assisted 2,500 landings during the last two…