On Mon, 2 Dec 2013 18:10:58 -0000
"Col" wrote:

Dawlish wrote:
On Sunday, December 1, 2013 11:01:58 AM UTC, John Hall wrote:
In industrial Castleford it was appalling. Not fog, but nasty
smelling smog, which necessitated scarves around one's mouth to
attempt to strain the pollution out of it. I remember it very well,
though I was very young. My parents were not able to get home to
Pontefract on Christmas Eve 1962 and us all had to stay with an
aunt and uncle. Only one prezzie on Christmas morning wasn't fun!
Santa didn't know where I was and delivered them to Pontefract, of
course!

If you stood in the middle of a 5m wide pavement, you could see
neither the road, nor the walls of the terraces, the smog was that
thick. The bus conductors were hanging out of the bus calling the
distance from the kerb to the driver - before they stopped running,
of course, leaying us stranded! We had great difficulty finding our
way only 200m along the pavement to our relations' flat in that fog.
By far the worst I've ever known and thank goodness we don't see the
like of it any more.

From a meteorological point of view it would be fascinating to
experience, but beyond that it's just as well we don't get such
conditions anymore. It must have been highly unpleasant even for
the fit & healthy, but of course deadly for the old & vulnerable.
Thousands of 'excess deaths', but this is what the Clean Air Act
was introduced to tackle and now thankfully those days are long gone.

The first really bad fog I've known would have been in about 1950 when
I would have been about 6 years old. I think we were probably let off
early from school and I walked home, keeping close to the garden
fences. Visibility was similar to what you describe, Col, in that I
couldn't see the pavement kerb from the fence and, when I had to cross
a road, I could see nothing when I was in the middle. That was in
Rushden where the houses mostly burned coal. However, sometime around
1970, I witnessed two fogs in the smokeless zone of Bracknell that
were of similar density, with visibility of only a couple of metres; if
I drove near the kerb so my passenger could guide me by following the
kerb, I was unable to see the central road markings or cats-eyes.

--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks. Mail: 'newsman' not 'newsboy'.
'Don't let old age put you off starting complicated jigsaws. If you
don't finish, it will give guests something fun to do at your funeral.'
- Bridget&Joan's Diary.