Karl the Fog

It’s summer here in San Francisco and we have our typical fog and more fog. (The above was taken on a walk during the afternoon a few days ago.) While it’s rather nice to wake up to the sound of fog horns (good excuse to cuddle back under the duvet for a bit) and delightful to go to sleep with that soothing sound – I must admit the fog does get tiresome for us residents. We have even given the fog a name – Karl — but more on that later.

For our tourists, the summers here are a big – really big – surprise. Even though we warn them, they don’t believe us and come out with get this – shorts and tee-shirts! Such tourists are dubbed blue legs — as their legs turn blue when hanging from the cable cars. The vendors down at Fisherman’s Wharf fund their children’s education from selling overpriced San Francisco jackets and sweatshirts to teeth-chattering visitors.

Now remember our fog is named Karl and he has a Twitter account with many, many followers. A great topic of conversation here is “what has Karl said lately?” — as Karl’s a big joker.

One of the favorites was on 4/20, when the city has its annual cannabis celebration in Golden Gate Park:

It’s hard to tell where the clouds in Golden Gate Park end and I begin. “Today’s high: everyone in San Francisco.”

But Karl disappeared, not the fog, but the Twitter feed for the last two years…leaving us all scratching our heads. But then, earlier this year the San Francisco Chronicle published this:

After a two year-long social media hiatus, San Francisco’s unofficial weather mascot Karl the Fog rolled back into Twitter.

“Oh, hey down there. I know it’s been a while, so hope you still recognize me (I put on a few metric tons over the last two years),” tweeted Karl.

“Moved in with my parents in Point Reyes at the start of the pandemic. The free rent was great, but nothing beats hanging 6ft away from you.”

Karl the Fog has been a part of San Francisco since his Twitter account first appeared in 2010. The anonymous user behind the parody account has tweeted over 10,000 times and has amassed a following of around 344,700 fog joke lovers.

What caused Karl’s account to go quiet for more than two years wasn’t immediately clear. A message seeking comment was not immediately returned.

“All that is sunny does not glitter,” reads Karl’s Twitter bio. “Not all those in the fog are lost.”

(excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle)

So while you may be suffering from heat and humidity, maybe it helps to think of us out here bundled up in the gloomy fog.