" Peter Clarke" wrote in message
...

"Keith (Southend)" wrote in message
...
A decade or so ago I would have looked at the forthcoming charts showing
high pressure on the near continent with a slack southerly flow and almost
guaranteed widespread fogs. However, so far the forecasts have hardly
mentioned fog(s). Is this to do with the "cleaner" air we now live with,
compared to the soot producing smogs of yester-year. Wew hardly get an
hour or two of fog in a year now, here at Southend-on-Sea, yet I can
remember days with it, and some days it never cleared at all through the
day.

What has changed?
--
Keith (Southend)
http://www.southendweather.net

I'm sure the main reason is that, 40 years and more ago, the main source
of heating houses and factories was coal. In the autumn and winter the
first job of the day in most households was to light the coal fire. On
calm, clear mornings the smoke from all these fires soon led to smoke
haze, and if conditions were at all misty, the smoke readily mixed with
it to produce fog.
In my young days, already a weather enthusiast, I used to look forward to
seeing the first fogs of autumn and seeing how long they took to clear.
The earliest date in autumn I noted an all day radiation fog was 30
October 1949, but in most years I expected at least one fog to last all
day before the end of November. If the fog was really thick there was
always the hope that school would close early in the afternoon !
I was thinking yesterday that although the air was dry with only a light
breeze, 50 years ago there would have been a noticeable smelly smoke
haze which would have been even thicker today.

Peter Clarke
Ewell, Epsom 55m



I've just been for my evening stroll and the air really does feel dense and
cold, actually to me back to days of yore (nice area) Then reading Keith's
fog thread (well lack off) and other recollections takes me back to the
Autumn of 62. That was real fog, or smog as it was known. Blimey that stuff
was acrid, yellowy/green and you could almost pick it up with a spoon-it was
that thick. Actually I say yellow/green but that was induced by street
lighting in the actual daylight hours I just seem to recall a dense grey.

As boy of course I loved it, nice and cosy indoors everything seemingly
closed in. Like many children during that Smog you couldn't go to school as
it was deemed dangerous-imagine that now into days H&S mad world. Then every
one just got on with it.
Where I lived then, Grove Lane in Camberwell ( just a few doors away from
where Jenny Eclair lives now) the road was always busy at rush hour and I
remember everything just coming to a standstill. I still have a vivid memory
of an old RT bus , a 176 creeping up Grove Lane with the conductor leading
the way with a torch. Another other point to remember was the smog would
actually get onto the bus as they were open vehicles and blimey it could be
absolutely bone numbingly perishing when travelling. It would also seep down
the hallway when the street door was opened.

Yet despite all the dangers, the being freezing cold in that damp clingy
smog,and the fact I now know how bad it was for people with respiratory
problems ; I loved every minute of it.

Global Warming ? a piece of cake. They don't know they're born.