So, I leave Dallas around ten thirty to go to Waco. About thirty miles down, I call Amanda and talk to her for about fifteen minutes. Toward the end of the conversation, she asks me where I am, so I look around and come to the conclusion that I have honestly no idea where I am. After a couple more minutes of driving, I still cannot even wager a guess. On the South side of Waxahachie I apparently drove into a dense cloud of fog.
I look around, and it is actually the densest fog I've ever seen, and it lasted all the way into Waco, about sixty miles. At best, road visibility wasn't much worse than regular night vision, so it was nine or ten car lengths as an estimate. At worst, though, it was around four or five. You know those series of stripes and reflectors that divide lanes of a highway? Well, I could only see about two and a half of them. That kind comprised most of the drive.
It was especially harrowing that I drove a good twenty miles without ever seeing anyone going my direction on the highway; it was desolate, and that's uncommon for I-35. So, I would get frightened whenever I approached a bridge, and the yellow sign on it telling me its clearance just jumped right out at me at high velocity. I didn't have much time to react to a curve in the road, either, if my attention were diverted for even a second.
It had some other interesting properties, too. You know how you're not supposed to turn on your brights in fog, right, on account of its being a colloid and all? Well, when there was nobody around, I decided to try it out, much like a kid touching something that someone else has explicitly mentioned is very hot. Sure enough, I was met with a brilliant cloud of white in front of me. "They" don't lie. Also, the entire sky flickered orange whenever I would change lanes. I passed a radio tower once, something that I ordinarily would never notice, but this time I thought I was driving into a lightning storm. One time, as I was entering a small town, I saw a red and an orange light on the other side of the highway. I thought it was a stop light at first, but it had curious properties of movement as I went up a hill and kept moving forward. It took me a few seconds, but I figured out that it was just a pair of tail lights on an old pickup that was traveling the same direction as I on the other side's access road. Yes, the fog was so dense that I couldn't even recognize tail lights that were a mere twenty yards away.
For the longest time I had no idea where I was. Since I could hardly see the next access road, I wasn't able to identify landmarks of towns, earlier. I drove a good half hour before knowing exactly where I was on my trip. Then I started getting into Waco and the density of the fog compounded with the ambient wetness made reading the road signs incredibly difficult. I would be about to drive under a green sign before I was at all able to read what it said; when I saw the one that said how far away my exit was I had to look at my odometer to remember where to exit, because I would have missed it, otherwise.
So yeah, it was pretty badass, despite being considerably scarier than sliding on ice or hydroplaning for appreciable distances.
Don't underestimate the fog.
--Guido
I look around, and it is actually the densest fog I've ever seen, and it lasted all the way into Waco, about sixty miles. At best, road visibility wasn't much worse than regular night vision, so it was nine or ten car lengths as an estimate. At worst, though, it was around four or five. You know those series of stripes and reflectors that divide lanes of a highway? Well, I could only see about two and a half of them. That kind comprised most of the drive.
It was especially harrowing that I drove a good twenty miles without ever seeing anyone going my direction on the highway; it was desolate, and that's uncommon for I-35. So, I would get frightened whenever I approached a bridge, and the yellow sign on it telling me its clearance just jumped right out at me at high velocity. I didn't have much time to react to a curve in the road, either, if my attention were diverted for even a second.
It had some other interesting properties, too. You know how you're not supposed to turn on your brights in fog, right, on account of its being a colloid and all? Well, when there was nobody around, I decided to try it out, much like a kid touching something that someone else has explicitly mentioned is very hot. Sure enough, I was met with a brilliant cloud of white in front of me. "They" don't lie. Also, the entire sky flickered orange whenever I would change lanes. I passed a radio tower once, something that I ordinarily would never notice, but this time I thought I was driving into a lightning storm. One time, as I was entering a small town, I saw a red and an orange light on the other side of the highway. I thought it was a stop light at first, but it had curious properties of movement as I went up a hill and kept moving forward. It took me a few seconds, but I figured out that it was just a pair of tail lights on an old pickup that was traveling the same direction as I on the other side's access road. Yes, the fog was so dense that I couldn't even recognize tail lights that were a mere twenty yards away.
For the longest time I had no idea where I was. Since I could hardly see the next access road, I wasn't able to identify landmarks of towns, earlier. I drove a good half hour before knowing exactly where I was on my trip. Then I started getting into Waco and the density of the fog compounded with the ambient wetness made reading the road signs incredibly difficult. I would be about to drive under a green sign before I was at all able to read what it said; when I saw the one that said how far away my exit was I had to look at my odometer to remember where to exit, because I would have missed it, otherwise.
So yeah, it was pretty badass, despite being considerably scarier than sliding on ice or hydroplaning for appreciable distances.
Don't underestimate the fog.
--Guido
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