On Sunday the 7th there was no letting up and emergency services were still shut down but the elderly and newborns began to die, unable to breathe and with no one to help them. And, of course, some people took advantage of this fog and burglaries took a spike and purses were snatched right off of women walking the streets.
People who spent any time outside would come back covered in soot.
#London fog 1952 drivers
Farm animals were choking to death and drivers were abandoning their cars in the middle of roads, unable to see where they were headed. Could you imagine that? It would be so creepy just watching fog sneak in under the door.īy the third day of London trapped under the fog, it had grown thirty miles wide continuing to enter people's homes, even reaching up to people's knees.
#London fog 1952 movie
Even movie theaters had to shut down because the fog was making its' way into the buildings. Sporting events got cancelled but of course the pubs stayed open. People were told to stay home and they did but they were cold so they continued to fill their furnaces with coal. Back then according to the UK's Met Office the pollutants that were emitted each day were 1,000 tonnes of smoke particles, 140 tonnes of hydrochloric acid, 14 tonnes of fluorine compounds, and 370 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and because of the lack of wind, this all hung heavy in the air.Īs this heavy fog settled, transportation was shut down, flights canceled and schools were closed. There were also various coal-fired power stations across the city. The air stank of rotten eggs because of the sulfur and black sludge covered the streets. It was named "pea-soup fog" after the artist John Sartain coined that term due to the fogs thickness and green color. This kind of thick fog wasn't exactly news to London, they had gained a reputation for their fog going back all the way to the 13th century but this fog was different. The anticyclone mixed with the burning coal and other toxic elements with an above average humidity for that time of the year turned the air into a fog of concentrated sulfuric acid. In November 2016, scientists out of Texas A&M University finally figured out what caused such a terrible storm of events. The coal back then was low-grade and sulfurous. So the air above London sat still and as the temperature continued to drop, people began to fill their furnaces with coal to keep warm. But it wasn't because of ghost pirates.Ī high pressure air mass settled over the Thames river and when the sun dropped, a cold front moved in from the west forcing any wind to come to a stop. On December 4th 1952 the city of London found itself trapped underneath a wall of fog and by December 9th when the fog finally lifted, roughly 12,000 had died.
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