BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Super fog should not be an issue if you’re traveling between Baton Rouge and New Orleans but parts of Interstate 55 are still closed if you’re planning to travel on it.
“If you’re heading down to I-10, that may be affecting you traffic-wise cause they are detouring areas around that stretch roadways,” Meteorologist Brandon Lashbrook said.
Lashbrook said super fog is caused by wildfire smoke and cool, saturated air. He said it takes two to four hours for the fog to leave after sunrise.
“With those areas of that dense fog that creates visibilities possibly down to 10 feet or less in some areas. So that dense fog combined with the smoke is what we tag super fog,” Lashbrook said.
Lashbrook said Monday morning’s super fog was a leading factor to a pileup that killed eight people and impacted more than a hundred cars.
He said it’s important to keep these tips in mind before heading on the road.
“The best thing to do is to slow down and make sure to use low-beam lights. You don’t want the high beam because that will reflect the fog and make visibility worse,” he said.
On Wednesday, Oct. 25, DOTD released a statement and said there was no timeline for completion of the inspections or the re-opening of I-55.
“There are some areas remaining that must be cleaned before inspection,” DOTD officials said.
On Thursday, Oct. 26, DOTD announced the interstate will be reduced to one lane near the crash site for the time being.
Lashbrook said we should expect to be fog-free the rest of the week.
“While we can’t rule out some areas of some patchy fog. We’re not expecting widespread dense fog as we saw previous days before,” Lashbrook said.
