Fog forms with the silence of a kitten's footsteps. The still air remains unchanged, nothing is added to it or removed from it. It simply starts to turn from clear to translucent as the pre- dawn chill condenses its water vapor into tiny droplets. The mists of a summer's dawn is just a light drape of fog, but it isn't too different from the blinding fogs along a cool coastline. The cryptic numbers and letters of the title are the weatherman's shorthand for "Indefinite ceiling 100 feet, sky obscured, visibility one- quarter mile, fog... a fog thick enough to shut down almost any airport.
In most places, fog is a foul- weather phenomena, forming in conjunction with rain or snowfall. That can happen in Elmira too, But Elmira also has a cruel way of starting a beautiful summer day with several hours of thick valley fog. It starts with a clear starry night which lets all the day's heat radiate away into space. The air cools, and the coolest air slides down the hillsides and accumulates in the valley, where it picks up lots of moisture from the river.
Elmira is legendary in aviation circles as a great place to observe these early morning fogs. Some pilots observe it from its dull gray underside as they wait for minimum takeoff visibility, and other pilots observe its brilliant white topside as they fly holding patterns in the sunshine above it, or pass overhead, enroute to an alternate airport.
Three recent mornings have been foggy, yet strangely pleasant, at Elmira. Each time, the fog layer has been fairly thin, and the sun above it has been strong. I have had enough fuel that I could comfortably wait it out, flying racetrack ovals over southeast Schuyler County. I also have a secret weapon though.
Not too long ago I grafted a set of walkman- type earbuds into my earphone cups. Electrically they are separate from the aircraft radios, and they terminate with a short pigtail jack that connects them to a CD player. I am not a music lover, and few songs outside of "sixties music" has ever captured my fancy, but I have found classical and big- band music to make a great backdrop to the beauty and romance of the sky.
Most of the classical CDs play well with routine nights, and my Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman disks go well with adventurous flights. When the weather is routine but I feel adventurous, I have a Hank Williams Senior anthology for company. The music stays in the background while technology and nature interact around the airplane.
Only the best weather is good enough to make valley fog, and it is splendid to behold from above. From a hilltop, a single valley can be viewed, but from an airplane the valleys pass below as if on parade. Some are thick with fog, and some are clear. Sometimes the fog lays flat, and sometimes it is puffed up or it may cling to one hillside in favor of the other. The world below, whether foggy bottoms, wooded hills or cropland lays in bright sunshine under blue sky.
The flowing music seems to make the whole world dance with the airplane as it makes its descent, circles through several turns of a holding pattern, and intercepts the final approach. The different sights drift past the windows intertwined with the flow of the music. One morning I was charmed by Beethoven's Fur Elize (sometimes, "Fleur de Lis") as I skimmed two thousand feet over the hills. As I turned to intercept the approach course, the music changed a section of his 5th symphony (dit- dit- dit-DAH), seemingly a boisterous celebration of triumph as the plane descended through the fog to find the runway at just the last minute.
Valley fog is not something that makes a pilot wax poetic. I know that before the summer ends, there will be mornings that hold the fog until noon, and I'll have to wait it out on the ground with other pilots delayed by our infamous fog. Eyes will be heavy with the boredom and the fatigue of a long work shift grown longer. For that day, none of us will acknowledge the reality that the beauties of flight are a rare privilege, with or without symphonic accompaniment.
The Elmira area starts another beautiful day in the summer of 2000. The sky is bright blue and the view of distant hills stretches almost forever. Sunshine drenches the hilltops in the still morning air. The valley floor is about 800 feet below the crests of the hills, so this fog was perhaps only 600 feet thick. When this photo was taken, the underside of the fog went right to the ground and no landing was possible.
Fog can be a fickle thing. On this morning in October 2002 the morning sun beamed brightly upon the town of Big Flats, the widest part of the Chemung Valley. No fog was present or forecast. In the half hour that it takes to fly from Syracuse to Elmira, the sun disappeared and the valley filled with fog. The plane just ahead of me just made it in, but I found nothing but gray at the 250 foot decision height. Several of us flew long oval holding patterns for an hour and a half before the fog dissipated.