Totals For August

August seemed to slip by quickly with all the picnics, BBQs and get-togethers going on but I managed to keep a daily list of fog sightings. That is with the help of Mike when I headed to the beach for a few days of fun.

For new readers, the Old Farmers Almanac had a saying about the amount of fog you have in August is an indicator about how many snow days you will have come wintertime. Last August seemed to have a little more fog than normal, this last winter we experienced more snow than normal so I decided to fog watch this year to see if it is as accurate.While fog watching last year I noticed just how many more times fog forms in the fields and forests on the East side of the house while not having a wisp on the West side. It makes sense when you see how this part of the valley lays in relationship to the river and the sunrise, yet I didn’t put it together until I kept monitoring (and writing it down) for a whole month to see the pattern.

In my post dated 9/3/16 called August Foggy Days 23 was total for the month. 2 thick fog days, 5 heavy fog that burned off by 10 am, 10 days of fog on East side of house only, and 6 days of spotty or very light fog.

This year, foggy days totaled 26 with 2 thick fog days,  4 heavy days that burned off by 10 am, 10 days with fog on East side only, and 10 days of spotty or very light fog.

The big difference this year was the smoke in the air. The first half of the month the air was circling down  from the Canadian wildfires and finally cleared out about mid-month.

The last week of the month brought the winds up from the south and along with it smoke from the large complex fire from Southern Oregon.

There were days when it was hard to tell how much of the fog was actually fog or a mixture of fog and smoke.

Now we are going to have to wait til winter to see if my tally for the month has a correlation to the snow report.