There will be some wintry showers of sleet and snow, mainly across east Leinster with some lying snow possible. Tonight, treacherous conditions are forecast with a severe frost setting in quickly after dark along with some icy stretches. However, after-dark showers of sleet and snow will move into parts of the east with highest temperatures of just 1 to 5 degrees, in light northerly or variable breezes. Sunny spells will follow, as wintry showers become confined to northern coastal counties. Fogs in London have indeed for many years past, for some reason or other, been undergoing reformation.Īs to the general estimation of fog, there are some, it is said, who rejoice in a mystery they perceive in it and in its effect on architecture when it is not too thick but into this we need not enter at the present.An icy start is expected today (December 8) with black ice and patches of freezing fog leading to hazardous travel conditions.Īccording to Met Éireann, well scattered showers will continue to sink southwards this morning, turning wintry in parts with a light dusting of snow on some lower levels. No doubt the industrial chimney has besooted the fog, but it certainly has not created it nor very materially intensified it. When Thetis rose out of the sea to console Achilles she was enveloped in silvery mist, and in Apollonius Rhodius broad daylight was suddenly overcast and the Argonauts were shut in a black fog from which they were only extricated by Apollo, who came down and held up his shining bow very much in the manner of a London ling-boy. The ancients were quite familiar with fogs of all sorts and colours. All theorists alike, however, seem to agree in treating fog as a late outcome of modern ways of life. Such is the darkening of counsel in this matter. He points out the obvious truth that if the lungs are partly filled with watery vapour, as they must be in a fog, they cannot contain so much vitalising oxygen as they otherwise would, and the whole system is depressed and enfeebled for want of it. Another makes little of smoke or sulphur, moisture or cold. It is not the smoke that does the mischief, he says it is the cold moisture that gets into the breathing passages of delicate lungs and occasions chill and irritation. “On the whole they are blessings in thick disguise.” Yet another scientist gravely questions the peculiar injuriousness of smoke, in a fog, whatever may be its components. There is no special cause of uneasiness as to the sulphur fogs, said the “Lancet,” in commenting on Mr. The next authority, one so generally respected as the “Lancet,” makes light even of the sulphur. It is quite another matter of course if it is laden with sulphurous smoke. Even this philosopher, however, stipulates for fog pure and simple. He gives tables of statistics which seem to show that lung diseases prevail in almost precisely inverse ratio to the dampness of the atmosphere. He admits that a fog-laden atmosphere is bad for certain ailments – rheumatism, for instance, – but he contends that it is good for the lungs, and in support of this opinion he points to the indisputable efficacy of the bronchitis kettle, which is merely a device for maintaining a dry atmosphere. But we have also before us facts and figures accumulated by a very able scientific observer who seems to make it as clear as Lord Mayor’s Day that fog is conducive to health and the prolongation of life. In broad daylight nothing looks much clearer or more conclusive than the evidence now and again put forth from the office of the Registrar General on the subject.Īccording to that, persistent fogs have been known to raise the death-rate from 22 to 48 per 1,000. If there is one point (writes a correspondent) upon which it might have been supposed that we were all agreed, it is the unwholesomeness and unhealthiness of foggy weather.
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