FOG on the 4 (byron highway)

[Bulldogdad]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

There is Tule Fog and then there is Ice Fog (Tule Fog when it's below freezing at ground level). It's known to happen near and in The Delta.

You don't need freezing temps for tule fog. Just a rapid cooling with relative high humidity.

[Fueler]

You'll like Brentwood. My wife and I live next door in Oakley and love it there. And from Tracy to Brentwood I would not call a commute. Short drive maybe, but not a commute.

[DMenscha]

I just love the syntax of "THE 4". Immediately know the OP is from SoCal.

[emmablue]

Yes I did live in so Cal about 10 years ago and ive never lost the ˝the˝ in front of freeway numbers. I take it you don't use the ˝the˝ up in the bay area.

[Fontucky]

They WILL correct you. Might as well start practicing dropping the "the".

[JGC97]

Originally Posted by emmablue

Hello,

We are moving to the Bay Area next month and I have narrowed my home search to the Brentwood area. My husband will be working in Tracy. I have heard mixed reviews on the commute not bad, bad...etc....

The new thing that I am hearing is that the fog on the 4 is terrible. Is this true? So do people just inch along until they get to an area that it clears enough?

We have 4 kids: 15, 12, 9, 3...and want a family oriented community with decent schools. I've read that Tracy smells, Menteca smells, Ripon doesn't have anything around it in regards to stores. (these were the places i was thinking of) So with the amount of money we have and the quality of home I'm thinking Brentwood is for us. I thought Discovery Bay, but everyone said you need a boat.

So feedback on the Fog commute would be appreciated.

About the fog. Yes, there are years when you can barely see the front of your car and other years it's pretty light. You'll see plenty of fog between Brentwood and Tracy. There is a lot of farmland and water so it's inevitable. Traveling from Ripon to Tracy will bring you right over the Mossdale Bridge and that's one of the worst for fog, not to mention traveling the Manteca by-pass.

As for the smell in Tracy. The water treatment plant is on the north side of Tracy and the areas northeast (north of Grantline Rd/East Street) area can get pretty smelly. That is an older area of Tracy. Holly Sugar used to emit some pretty potent smells from the sugar beets but it closed down, as did the Heinz plant on the east side of town. If you move to a subdivision that was built near a dairy or ranch, you'll smell that, too.

I used to live in the center of town, on Highland and I never had any problem with smells in the city. Before that, I was on the southwest area, down Corral Hollow Rd and we had a dairy pretty close by. The thing was we were living in the country and that's what "country" smells like.

Tracy has changed so much and it's just another bedroom community. If you want a mall, Costco, Winco, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc., and an abundance of grocery stores, then Tracy is where you want to be.

Best school is the area? Jefferson. K-8. Your 3 and 9-yr-old would attend and then transfer to one of the two high schools. McKinley elementary school was a great school, too. I can't say what the quality of the education is in Tracy now. I moved there when I was in the 5th grade, graduated from Tracy High, as did my spouse and even my two children. The schools were good but I don't know how they are now.

Frankly, if you're going to work in Tracy, I'd advise you to move to Tracy. It's got everything you need and you can always ask a couple of the local realtors about the best areas. Ben Curran has been there since the wheel was invented and his daughter now works in his office. They could tell you everything you want to know about Tracy and they won't mislead you, either. That's my two cents. Good luck in your future move.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by Bulldogdad

You don't need freezing temps for tule fog. Just a rapid cooling with relative high humidity.

You need freezing temps at ground level for Ice Fog to form.