Because we could all use some serotonin these days, here’s a look back at Karl The Fog coming into the Bay Area in a spectacular fashion.
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of all things Karl The Fog. After a long hiatus, the famous fog took returned to Twitter in 2021 as the go-to Bay Area fog account, nudging Karla The Fog out of the way (though she still remains a prominent fixture on the Musk-owned social media platform). Karl has continued to swoon us with his digital charisma, tongue-in-cheek jokes, and appreciation for the Bay Area’s marine layers.
Almost two years ago, Karl absolutely flexed on Mother Nature on November night — providing a jaw-dropping scene as she slipped under Salesforce Tower toward Oakland.
“Just WOW,” the Twitter account belonging to NWS CWSU Oakland tweeted out. In fact: The filmed fog that day was so dense it triggered Fog Advisory warnings throughout the Bay Area that day.
But this spectacular footage of Bay Area fog rolling into the region is becoming less frequent. Todd Dawson, a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, noted to the SF Examiner that historical fog records from coastal stations and airports dating back to the 1950s found there’s been about a 33% reduction in fog frequency since the early 20th century.
“We’re really perturbing the climate system,” said Dawson to the newspaper. “We’re changing the way air circulates. That means that changes the way our storms behave, the severity of the storms, and other things like fog formation and duration.”
Let’s just hope that Biden’s $1.2 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill — a large portion of that sum expect to go toward green initiatives, like expanding the country’s EV charging network and incentivizing solar energy installations — will help Karl The Fog thicken up over the 21st century.
