Do you remember when the sun was shining? Almost not, maybe. And it’s not going to get much better outside anytime soon.
We have been under a gray blanket for some time, with a special fog, says RTV Drenthe weatherman Hans Nienhuis. “It is very humid air, a layer that does not want to budge because there is no wind. There is very dry and warm air above. At a height of one and a half kilometers it is now almost ten degrees.”
The air at the ground is heavier than the warm air due to the cold, so it does not rise. “The air is humid, completely saturated, and has nowhere to go. There is no way to heat that air, because the sunlight also reflects off the white blanket. The humid air then remains hanging. The atmosphere is momentarily stuck .”
The fact that the weather is so calm, without wind, is due to high-pressure areas. There is one above eastern Europe, and above Spain. As long as there is no movement, the fog cannot be cleared. “That will take a few days.”
All in all, we have a very different winter than last year. Then rain was the protagonist, for months. Nienhuis: “What we have now is the opposite. High-pressure areas that remain in place and keep all depressions at bay.”
A fog period like this is not standard, but it does occur occasionally. “Most winters have fewer of these types of high-pressure blockages.
The high-pressure areas that cause our fog are in the wrong place to bring a ‘real winter’. “If these areas had been a little further north, we would have had a hell of a winter. Then we would have a northeasterly wind.”
Clearances should come from the ocean. “The high-pressure area will show wear and tear and it will be cleared on Wednesday,” Nienhuis expects. Just maybe the sun will shine through on Tuesday.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, fog was much more common than now. That’s good news, because it’s because the air is much cleaner. “The fact that there was much more fog at that time was unusual. This is actually normal.”
“Clean air contains much fewer particles that the water in the air can adhere to. Then the fog is less dense, or it remains hazy. This time it has nothing to do with climate change.”