One of the coolest things about living here is the way the ocean interacts with the valleys. I live in the Santa Clara Valley, separated from the ocean by the Santa Cruz mountains — which are the surface manifestation of the San Andreas fault, actually.
The interaction of the ocean and the inland areas is what gives San Francisco the famous fog; the city is not separated from the ocean by mountains, so the fog rolls right in. Here in San Jose, we seem to never get fog — because the mountains stop it. Sometimes, this is spectacular and beautiful, like this morning. I stood and watched Mt. Umunhum — the closest peak — this morning, because fog from the ocean was backing up behind it and spilling down this side, looking for all the world like some kind of liquid dammed up behind it.
Back home in DC, fog is a mist that just kind of hangs there then burns off. Fog here is a moving mass, wisps swirl around and the clouds of fog fall to earth and envelop you like a creepy horror film.
To capture this morning’s display, I replaced my regular webcam with my high definition video camera and I’m making a time-lapse movie of the fog — although, in real time you can watch it move, it should be much more impressive in time-lapse. I’ll post the final movie here later today.
Update: Here’s a couple of movies of the fog and clouds rolling in from the ocean. (Requires QuickTime or the latest iTunes/iPod Video.)
– Very short movie, about 400K
– Much longer movie, about 3MB
