Had a real scare driving last night...

[A930Rocket]

I was driving home from work last night at about 1:30 am. The weather was clear and 65*, but as I drove near water/marshes, it would fog up slightly, then clear back up.

On this one road not far from home, I hit a spot where I could see a little more fog ahead. Then BAM, I couldn't see ten feet in front of me. The cool air trapped smoke from a fire somewhere that made it impossible to see. I hit the brakes and slowed down from 55 to 5-10 mph, while turning on the flashers and the music off. It was like driving into a cotten ball and the quick transition really startled me. Plus, I was thinking I might be driving into a forest fire, as the area is densly wooded. With my low beams and flashers on, I was using the center and side lines just in front of me to keep on the road. It was nerve wracking. Big rigs use this road a lot and I was concerned about them either crossing the line or getting rear ended. After a few miles, it slowly cleared up.

Drive carefully out there!

Edit: Not sure why, but it smells like smoke on that certain stretch of road a lot. Who could be burning that much or possibly it's the Nucor steel plant north of it? Not sure what a steel plant smells like though.

[GH85Carrera]

I was driving through the Florida panhandle on the interstate toward Jacksonville once and the fog just kept getting worse. I was driving with my flashers on and I could not see but 5 or 10 feet in any direction. The simi trucks were flying along. I was off on the shoulder a lot of the trip. The trucks thought they could see but I know they could not see me in my 914. It was a very scary drive.

We actually had some fog on my commute in today. It was enought that intersections were hard to see. It was only for a couple of miles fortunately.

[Evans, Marv]

I experienced something like that years ago when driving at night and ran into tulley (Sp. ?) fog in the central valley of CA. Throught the top of the windshield you could see the stars, but horizontally & down there was nothing beyond a few feet. I had to look out the side window and drive slowly using the center stripes to guide me. Fortunately I was near a friend's house and stayed over night there. That's the only time I've ever done that. I used to work with a lady that had some large scarrs on her face & head. She told me she got them during a foggy condition on the road and pulled over to the side to wait it out. Said she was rear ended by another car pulling off the road and running into the back of hers.

[Zeke]

The Tule fog is legendary. 100 car pile ups with trucks has happened.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

Edit: Not sure why, but it smells like smoke on that certain stretch of road a lot. Who could be burning that much or possibly it's the Nucor steel plant north of it? Not sure what a steel plant smells like though.

Could be a bog fire, where the peat in the soil burns constantly under foot, for years and for many miles around.


Seen it on TV where people would jump and a puff of smoke rises out of the ground.

Coal under ground can do the same thing.

[RWebb]

call the local air quality people & ask

I thought Nucor had a pretty good rep. tho...

[Joe Bob]

AQMD in South Carolina?.......yeah....

[carreradpt]

I ran into something like that in CA 10 years ago. Heading north on I-5 at night trying to make the sacramento area and I hit fog, really thick fog and literally could not see past the front end of the car. Same thing, hit the breaks, flashers on, radio off and where are the lines. Crawling along looking for an out, all of a sudden a car goes zipping by me, holy crap. Then another, I need to get off this freeway. I was sure I was going to get run over. I have never been so scared in my life.

[imcarthur]

Fog, Florida rain & snow whiteouts. I have driven them all. All very, very scary. I remember whiteouts where the only thing you could see was the telephone poles above the blowing snow. You just center yourself with them . . .

Ian

[Burnin' oil]

Everybody that lives in the Central Valley of California has tule fog driving stories. Nasty stuff.

[porwolf]

My biggest road scare was years ago. It was night and I was on the way home around midnight from skiing on Mammoth Mountain, here in California. Most of the road was a two lane highway, No. 395 east of the Sierra Nevada. That road goes mostly through uninhabited desert land. I have traveled it many times before and I thought I knew it very well. This road has quite a few dips across the desert washes. You canot see them at night. A trailer-truck was going too slow in front of me. I decided to pass it. I saw no lights coming towards me on a rather flat part of the road. Just when I was halfway past the truck all of a sudded headlights are popping up towards me on this rather narrow two lane highway. They came out of one of those invisible dips. I knew I had not enough time to complete passing the truck and also had no chance getting back behind it. I flashed my headlights trying to warn everybody of my dilema. Fortunately the truck moved over to the right and the oncoming car to the left. I went full speed, about 70 MPH, between them. Not a scratch! But cold chivers went down my spine.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

AQMD in South Carolina?.......yeah....

nearly every state has a division dept. etc. for air quality - but not a "district"

[Joe Bob]

Bog Fire, natural occurrence.....ag fire, ag is king in the South.....while every State does have some Air Laws, it's up to the locals to enforce them. Some States are a little more lenient than others.

[Jim Bremner]

20 years ago there was a pile up on the 5 in the central vally due to the Thule fog. I went down the 5 a week after it happened and Cal trans hadn't picked up the medical waste piles yet! Three piles 6' x 3' of med waste,bloddy gause, IV bags etc. The carnage must have been huge.

Once a month I used to drive the 5 and 99 from Bakersfeild to LA My game plan if I got into a BAD fogbank and heard tires screaching was to mash the gas pedal down and steer right and hold on till I was clear out into a farm feild a 1/2 a mile to safety.

I did have one night driving from LA to SLO that I stopped in Buelton for the night due to fog. Not worth the risk.

[A930Rocket]

I thought about calling the county today to ask around. Passed a cop in the weeds in that same area last night (with light smoke this time). Thought about backing up to ask him if he knew anything, but motored on home.

It was totally different then driving in a snow blizzard. Plus the smoke smell added a little bit of fear of what was ahead.

DHEC (Department of Health and Environmental Control) would be the state agency in charge of air quality I think.

It was unnerving, but might be something pilots get used too?

[RWebb]

do they burn crop fields there?

that used to be common in Orygun, but they started to reduce it after a big pile up on I-5 killed several people

[A930Rocket]

No crops that I know of. I do see people occasionally burning yard waste, etc., in the few homes around there, but thsmell of smoke is all the time. How can you burn it day in and day out?

Not far away is the "stink factory", which is a pulp and paper mill, but it has it's own distictive smell.

[Scuba Steve]

It could've been another controlled burn. For those that don't live in the area, immediately to the northeast and going on for many miles is a huge national forest. Smoke from prescribed burns frequently travels back down to the southwest. Given that the wind for the last few days has been from the NNE / NE that's my guess.

They don't have a burn schedule; all they say is

(Columbia, SC)— The USDA Forest Service has begun implementing annual prescribed burning on the
Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests. Contingent on weather factors, burning may continue as late as
June.

Conditions have been pretty good for prescribed burns - rain in the area and light winds to keep fires from spreading too far.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by A930Rocket

No crops that I know of. I do see people occasionally burning yard waste, etc., in the few homes around there, but thsmell of smoke is all the time. How can you burn it day in and day out?

Not far away is the "stink factory", which is a pulp and paper mill, but it has it's own distictive smell.

AHHHH the aroma of a paper mill.

Right up there with a cattle feed lot or a pig farm or a cotton gin.

In Oklahoma there are many signs along the interstate that say "Don't Drive into smoke." The occasional grass fire can make very thick smoke.

[A930Rocket]

We only smell it when passing by, but my grandparents lived close enough to it, that it was an everyday deal. We visited them every summer and the smell of it reminds me of them, vacations here, etc.

I'vver heard of people working there that can't get the smell off their clothes.

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

AHHHH the aroma of a paper mill.

Right up there with a cattle feed lot or a pig farm or a cotton gin.

In Oklahoma there are many signs along the interstate that say "Don't Drive into smoke." The occasional grass fire can make very thick smoke.