22 October: 10 Facts about Fog

Today is the first day of the month of fog in the French Revolutionary Calendar. So here are ten facts about fog:

1. First of all, what is fog? Fog is tiny droplets of Water and/or ice crystals suspended in the air near the ground when the dew point and air temperature difference is less than 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 Celsius). If it formed in the sky it would be called a stratus cloud. Which brings us to the question, what’s the difference between fog and mist? According to the Met Office, if you can see for more than 1,000 metres it's mist, but if the visibility drops below 1,000 metres it's fog.
2. Fog contains around 0.5 ml of water per cubic metre. If you filled an Olympic sized swimming pool with fog and condensed the water, you’d get just 1.25 litres of water (or slightly more than 2 pints).
3. Grand Banks, an area of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland is said to be the foggiest place in the world. It’s where the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south meet, causing fog. The area has more than 200 days of fog every year.
4. There is such a thing as a fog bow which is like a Rainbow but happens when sunlight falls on fog. They are fainter and slightly harder to see than rainbows, because the water droplets are smaller, but you are more likely to see the complete circle. You might even see your distorted shadow inside it. This is called The Brocken Spectre.
5. During WWII weather reports had to be censored so that enemy Submarines couldn’t find out about the weather conditions. Even commentators of sporting events weren’t allowed to mention the weather. One Chicago radio announcer managed to cover a whole football game, in which the fog was so thick he couldn’t even see the field, without mentioning the fog or the weather once. Fog can actually be useful in warfare as George Washington discovered in 1776 when, fighting a losing battle against the British, he was able to use a heavy fog to get his men away from the scene unseen and avoid heavy casualties. It can also be a nuisance as the RAF in Britain found in WWII. They worked out a system whereby fog could be burned off runways by pumping petrol down the edges and setting Fire to it. Over 450,000 litres of fuel an hour could be burned in this way and the glow from the flames could be seen 100km away.
6. I couldn’t find a date for this but in the UK, a Football match was cancelled once due to fog and everyone went home apart from one of the goalkeepers, a player called Sam Bartram, who didn’t hear the announcement. He stayed at his post in goal for 15 minutes until a policeman came and told him the game was off.
7. It’s possible to catch fog and turn it into drinking water. This is regularly done in the Atacama Desert in Chile, one of the driest places in the world. It once went 173 months without rain but there is often fog from the coast, which the locals call camanchaca, meaning 'creeping fog.' People catch it in large nets with 1mm holes which catch the droplets and collects them in a gutter. An average size fog catcher of 40 m3 can capture up to 66 litres of water a day.
8. They not only get enough water from this to drink, but there’s enough left over to make Beer. There’s a brewery there which makes 24,000 litres a year of its signature beer Atrapaniebla (meaning "Fog Catcher"). In San Francisco, another place known for its fog, there is a type of vodka made from San Francisco fog. And in Italy there is a wine growing area that is frequently covered in thick fog. While they don’t actually use the fog to make the Wine, the fog does mean the Grapes ripen later in the year. The wine from this area is named after the Italian word for fog, 'nebbia'.
9. In London, before the Clean Air Act, they’d get a type of fog called a “pea souper” which was yellow and so thick you couldn’t see the ground. Needless to say this type of fog was full of toxic chemicals and a pea souper in 1952 killed 4,000 people in five days. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, these fogs are a thing of the past. There hasn’t been a pea souper in London since 1962.
10. Fog affects how fast we think we are driving. In normal conditions, we are able to judge speed using clues such as trees or buildings in our peripheral vision. It’s all to do with contrast, which is greatly reduced when it’s foggy, so drivers tend to think they are driving more slowly than they really are and may drive faster as a result, just when they should be slowing down.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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