Fog has blanketed 400 miles of California’s Central Valley for weeks. Scientists and meteorologists say the conditions are ripe for such cloud cover to persist: an early wet season, low temperatures and a stable, stationary high pressure system.
But a look at X, Instagram, and TikTok shows that not everyone is so optimistic.
People report that the fog has a strange consistency, with a nefarious scattering of unusual white and black particles. They call it “mystical” and emphasize the name “radioactive” fog, but this is a scientific explanation for such a natural fog phenomenon and does not indicate that the fog carries radioactive materials.
User X, who goes by the handle Wall Street Apes, posted a video of a man claiming to be from Northern California dragging his finger along fog condensate on a truck’s grill. His fingers are covered in white.
“What is this place?” the man said as the camera zoomed in on his finger. “There’s something in the fog that can’t be explained…check it out…you’re all crazy…what’s going on? There was asbestos mixed in there.”
Another user, @wesleybrennan87, posted a photo of two contrails crisscrossing the sky through the fog.
“For all of you who have been chasing the dense Tule (radiation) fog in the California Valley, we had a brief clear day today, but we can see that they are quite active above our heads…” the user posted.
Scientists have confirmed that there is something in the fog. But what it is and where it comes from, they say, is disappointingly commonplace.
The Central Valley is known for having some of the worst air pollution in the country.
And “fog is very sensitive to pollutants,” says Peter Weispenzias, a fog researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Water droplets have a large surface area and remain suspended in the air for very long periods of time, from days to weeks, during which time they can absorb disproportionate amounts of gases and particles known as pollutants,” he said.
He hasn’t analyzed the fog in the Central Valley for this latest episode, but said it’s not hard to imagine what could be lurking in the droplets.
“It could be an alphabet soup of different things: agriculture, industry, automotive, wood smoke in this region, there are a lot of candidates,” Weispenzias said.
Reports of mist turning into a gelatinous slime if left unchecked are not entirely surprising, given that all the floating biological matter such as fungal spores, nutrients and algae floating around can stick to the Velcro-like water droplets, he said.
He said the good news is that while the main route of people’s exposure to this substance is inhalation, the fog droplets are relatively large. This means that when you breathe them in, they don’t go deep into your lungs, unlike the particulate matter you breathe in on a sunny, dry day. The substance can reach lung tissue.
The bigger concern is ingestion, he said, as the fog covers plants and open aquariums.
So be sure to wash your vegetables and anything you put outside, as they may be eaten later.
Dennis Baldocchi, a fog researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, agreed with Weispenzias’ assessment and said a storm system predicted to develop this weekend will likely displace the fog and free it from the valley’s cold, dirty shoals.
However, if the high pressure system returns in the coming weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the area becomes foggy again.
