"Martin Rowley" m wrote in
message ...

... well Jack, I can hear the bones of old forecasters rotating in graves
up and down the country now, as you revisit problems that caused many of
them (and those of us still extant) to lose much sleep over the years!

The literature is stuffed full of 'techniques' for forecasting the point
when fog would clear - based on empirical studies from the 1940's onwards.
Many of these were 'station' studies on RAF fields up and down the east &
south of England (often not published or only internally circulated) and
although we never had enough radio-sonde data to go round, we certainly
had more than now. Even with a dense network of data (surface) and radio
sondes, the techniques often assumed a 'British Standard Radiation Fog'
model, and usually worked well given this (i.e. fog forms evening or
overnight, light winds, no change in gradient and/or moisture advection
etc).
snip

And, lest we forget, this morning's fog was not radiation fog ... what
with a 15+kn northerly blowing through it.

Philip