Breakfast with Karl

The view from the upstairs porch.
Don't worry: it will burn off by 11 a.m.

    Karl is finally back, after being absent for nearly three weeks. We don't see a lot of Karl at this time of year, so waking up to gray skies and higher humidity was a lovely surprise. Karl is the fog.
    The Bay Area gets a lot of fog, primarily due to our geography and physics. Put a large pool of cold water (the Pacific Ocean) next to a warm surface (California), then gently blow air across the top of the water and the water vapor will condense to the point it can be seen. The fog starts to form off the California coast in the afternoon, streams in through the Golden Gate around sunset, and by the following morning, the Bay is shrouded in gray, tourists are shivering, and everyone is dressed in layers that are shed as the fog burns off. Everybody talks about the fog: "May Gray," "June Gloom," "Fogust," "fog days of summer," and even "fogpocalypse" are names given to the weather conditions. We're miles away from the Pacific Ocean, but blocks from another large pool of cold water (San Francisco Bay), so Karl usually joins us for breakfast.
    Why "Karl"? The 2003 movie Big Fish and Twitter.
    According to local news sources, in August 2010, a parody account named "@KarltheFog" popped up on Twitter, and began posting humorous comments about the fog and low clouds and the effect on planned events. (We complain about the fog, but don't let it get in the way of doing things.) The name "Karl" came from a character in the film: a giant who was terrorizing a town until someone realized that he was simply hungry and lonely. The creator of the account felt the fog was, like Karl, misunderstood, and set up the account with the comment, "All that is sunny does not glitter, not all those in the fog are lost."
    Anthropomorphizing the local weather condition changed attitudes toward it. The @KarltheFog Twitter account has, as of this date, 365,000 followers, and more than 20,000 likes. Karl has been a Jeopardy clue, and appears in a popular TV commercial promoting the beauty of California. San Francisco even has a "Fog Appreciation Day" food truck gathering to kick off "Fogust." And locals have gone from complaining to simply shrugging it off--when shivering tourists ask if summer is always so cold and gray, locals simply answer, "Oh, that's just Karl," before pointing them to the closest shop for a fleece hoodie embroidered with the Golden Gate Bridge.