Those of us lucky enough to regularly cross one of the world’s great bridges, the Golden Gate Bridge, know what to expect in the summer. Fog often makes its way through the suspension cables. Tourists wear new souvenir sweatshirts. You may feel like you are in a localized storm. I love it.
On the bridge on a foggy day, even in the middle of a summer heat wave elsewhere in California, my car’s thermometer reads: If you measure cold air blowing out of the Pacific Ocean, it’s usually 59 degrees. When I get home, that thermometer ticks as steadily as the odometer. Where I live, 20 miles (20 miles) north of the bridge, it can be 100 degrees (40 degrees in about 15 minutes).
Fog is more than just the surreal weirdness of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. It is an important part of its climatology and culture. It is a life force, with an uncertain future.
With that in mind, I spent most of this summer chasing the fog. People studied the fog, lived in it, and even tried to catch it. The result is a Climate Desk report full of graphics and photos trying to clear the air in the fog.
Fog is capricious — hard to predict, research, and define. It may be the most difficult thing to measure in meteorology. Unlike temperature, humidity, wind, and precipitation, fog has no reliable gauge. We know how it forms, but we don’t know exactly where it’s going.
That’s what bothers scientists. We know the world is warming at an alarming rate, but no one knows what effect climate change is having on fog. The general feeling among scientists and locals is that it is disappearing. One of his key studies, conducted in 2010, using observational data from airports along the California coast, concluded that fog had decreased by a third since 1951.
The impact is huge. Coastal California’s Mediterranean climate has little rain from mid-spring to mid-fall. The daily rhythm of summer fog coming and going, the most reliable bursts of cold air, is why most of us within a short drive to the coast don’t have air conditioning. That’s why coastal redwoods survive through dry summers. From June to August, San Francisco is the coolest major city in the continental United States, and may be the last refuge from the crisp, cold air in the warm summer.
It all depends on the fog and the cool sea air it brings.
So I went looking for fog and people who live with it. That led me, among other things, to researchers trying to capture it by squeezing water air like a sequoia to see if fog could be a viable source of water. I love it.
I boarded a Coast Guard lifeboat and went to the ship traffic control room on San Francisco Bay. They hate fog.
Then he took us to the most famous foggy place on earth, the Golden Gate Bridge. (The “fog” glyph shows the clouds and the suspiciously familiar suspension bridge tower tops.) The bridge workers have the endless task (fog or shine) of painting the bridge. It includes people and those who control something that controls it. Tourists don’t see it, but they certainly hear it: fog horns.
Now I can point out to my family where that foghorn is when I’m driving over the bridge. And as we approach the bridge, we continue our usual guessing game: Is there fog? Can you see the top of the tower?
That’s the beauty of San Francisco fog. I don’t know for sure. But for kids, fog is a good thing. This place wouldn’t be without it.
Fog has blanketed some parts of the Bay Area, leaving others drenched in the sun. here is the full storyphotos by Nina Riggio and graphics by Scott Reinhard.
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