The Sacramento area may get a white Christmas this year, but not the kind Bing Crosby sang about.
Area meteorologists are unsure if this year’s thick radiation fog — known regionally as tule fog — will disperse in time for the holidays, thanks to persistent weather patterns keeping the cloud layer firmly over the region.
How did the tule fog form in Sacramento?
Jan Null, a former National Weather Service forecaster in Northern California and current professor of meteorology at San Jose State University, said Sacramento’s early fall weather patterns caused a perfect storm for a particularly heavy fog year.
“The perfect recipe for radiation fog … is for there to be low-level moisture, clear skies and light winds,” Null said. “Right after it quit raining (in late November), we had high pressure build over us and that’s when we got all three of those ingredients.”…