Is London foggy?

[P205]

Often when people hear I'm from the UK, they mention London and a lot of foreigners associate London with fog. I went to university in London, but I really don't remember much fog. It was a long time ago now, so maybe I'm misremembering.

is London still foggy?
Was it something to do with pollution so doesn't happen much now?

I remember seeing the scene with the fog in The Crown, so i'm sure I'd remember something like that happening.

People always seem a little disappointed and confused when I tell them that London isn't actually foggy. It's a bit like saying the Eiffel Tower isn't in Paris or something.

Rarely - the toxic gases are invisible now

That was due to coal fires and improved post the clean air act in the 50’s. Just pollution we can not see these days.

We were once asked the same by a taxi driver at Disneyland (Miami)!

It was once, but as a pp said the fogs and smogs disappeared after the clean air act. As a child I remember being startled at the difference in the buildings being cleaned - it hadn’t occurred to me that there was pale clean stone under all that black - I’d thought that was their natural colour.

It’s smoggy rather than foggy isn’t it?

No. In the autumn you get a few foggy days, but not more than anywhere else

London isn't foggy at all. It's actually far less foggy than many other major cities, for example Los Angeles is much more foggy.

The only reason the "foggy London" myth started was because by coincidence there happened to be a number of very famous writers writing books set in London during the time period when London experienced bad smog due to burning of an especially dirty kind of fuel. For example, in some Sherlock Holmes stories there are mentions that the air is so bad Holmes needs to hold up a flame just to be able to see writing on a wall in broad daylight.

These books and authors established the iconic image of foggy-shrouded London, and don't realise they refer to a specific pollution-related phenomena that doesn't exist anymore, and not actual fog.

Yes it can be foggy. But not today. It is glorious

My mum was born in 1938 and grew up in Finsbury Park. She said they definitely had "peasoup" fogs but it all cleared up with the Clear Air Act. So the "fog" was actually smog.
Although when I drive round the M25 I can definitely see the haze over London caused by pollution so air quality is still sub par in London.

Thanks!

I was asked this week about it by a guy and he seemed really shocked, so I felt bad a bit.

I have to admit, I'm quite terrified by the idea of a real pea-souper. That you can't see something right in front of you while walking in London.

I do remember fog being mentioned a lot in Sherlock Holmes.

Old Londoner here. The peasoupers were pretty much over by the end of the sixties. They were frequent in winter when I was a child and really filthy. We were instructed by parents to pull our woollen scarves over our nose and mouth as the air was so dirty, to try to filter it. I did slightly miss the eerie weirdness of the strange muffled sounds of traffic and not being able to see more than a few feet in front of yourself in a bad fog, other pedestrians suddenly looming in front of you, etc. I, too, have been occasionally asked in other countries about whether we still get them.

Thanks! That's really interesting.

I used to live in Spain, and I remember being amazed at the amount of people who asked if London is foggy!
I realized it must be the images they show on TV from the 50s/60s - Sherlock Holmes etc