Most Londoners woke up to find tiny water droplets clinging to their windows and the usual view outside drastically cut short this morning (Saturday, October 9).
The blanket of precipitation shrouding the city is particularly dramatic in central London, where the usual views of the city’s most iconic skyscrapers has been totally obscured.
Which begs the age-old question – is the white blanket over London mist, or fog?
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Luckily, the Met Office has cleared this up for us with some handy guidance on the difference between the two – as well as what differentiates them both from ‘haze’.
The Met Office describes how fog and mist differ depending on how far you can see through them.
The Met Office website states: “Fog is when you can see less than 1,000 meters away, and if you can see further than 1,000 metres, we call it mist.”
What we are seeing today, then, is Fog, the Met Office weather forecast has confirmed.
Londoners can expect the day’s weather to be characterised by “Fog patches clearing to warm sunny spells.”
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Both fog and mist are the result of water droplets suspended in the atmosphere at different densities, while haze is a different phenomenon altogether.
Here are the full Met Office descriptions of Fog, Mist and Haze:
Fog
In our meteorological glossary fog is defined as ‘obscurity in the surface layers of the atmosphere, which is caused by a suspension of water droplets’.
By international agreement (particularly for aviation purposes) fog is the name given to resulting visibility less than 1km.
However, in forecasts for the public, this generally refers to visibility less than 180m.
Mist
Mist is defined as ‘when there is such obscurity and the associated visibility is equal to or exceeds 1000 m.’
Like fog, mist is still the result of the suspension of water droplets, but simply at a lower density.
Mist typically is quicker to dissipate and can rapidly disappear with even slight winds, it’s also what you see when you can see your breath on a cold day.
Haze
A third term you might also hear mentioned is haze.
This is a slightly different phenomenon which is a suspension of extremely small, dry particles in the air, not water droplets.
These particles are invisible to the naked eye, but sufficient to give the air an opalescent appearance.
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https://www.mylondon.news/weather/london-weather-difference-between-mist-21811259
