Driving safe in fog

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - It seems every day we’re talking about a foggy start in our forecast, and it’s what many residents woke up to Thursday morning.

“Visibility was around zero miles, for probably at least an hour or so,” said meteorologist Jacob Durham.

A time-lapse from our sky cam Thursday morning shows you just how dense that fog was.

“Fog is created when we have a lot of moisture in the atmosphere, and specifically when temperatures and dew points get close together,” he said. “And that’s what we had this morning where temperatures were back into the low 50s, and we’ve got a lot of low-level moisture around.”

Durham says fog might make an appearance again.

“We’re definitely gonna see the possibility of fog at least the next few mornings, especially heading into Friday.”

With that in mind, it’s important to take the necessary precautions as you head out in the morning.

“We want you to make sure that you pay attention to that speedometer,” said State Trooper Derek Senegal.

Senegal says speed is just one part of the equation.

“If you’re driving in fog to utilize your lights, with just normal beam not high beam because if you put it on high beam, the light is going to reflect back into your eyes,” he said.

He says drivers should use the lines on the side of the road as a guide.

“There’s that fog line, that solid white line, you can also use that as a guide to make sure that you’re staying within your lane of travel, don’t recommend that you use that center dashed line, we want you to make sure you stay far to the right.”

He also mentioned rolling down your window to hear other vehicles approaching.

“You can crack the window a little bit if you can, so you can pay attention to maybe emergency vehicle on the roadway, another vehicle approaching or anything on a roadway, someone blowing the horn.”

Senegal says there were a few crashes yesterday, but none in the Troop D area were attributed to fog.

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