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ANOTHER person has died in a car accident on Louisiana highways due to poor visibility, local police said.
At least five car accidents on Interstate 10 on Tuesday resulted in one death and eight injuries because of the dangerous driving conditions around New Orleans, officials said at a press conference.
The incredibly dense fog blanketing the area this week has been a result of smoke from wildfires burning in nearby swampland that is combining with cold humid air, according to Fox Weather.
The low visibility on I-10 that caused the car accidents on Tuesday was mostly caused by smoke from the Michoud Fire, which has burned more than 200 acres of swampland over the last month.
“Those temperatures are dropping,” Fox Weather meteorologist Britta Merwin explained.
“That’s what’s leading to that fog formation because we do have that warmer air aloft.”
And the heavier air traps more condensed smoke nearer to land.
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“It allows for everything to kind of hug the ground. You’re literally driving through a cloud,” she said.
New Orleans and several other Gulf cities have been under a Dense Fog Advisory warning since Tuesday, which warns drivers to stay off the roads or take extreme caution when driving if necessary because of the poor visibility caused by the fog.
“The problem is you can’t see, and if you can’t see, you shouldn’t be driving,” Merwin said.
Dense fog can reduce visibility to under a quarter-mile, but when combined with smoke, visibility can drop to under 100 feet.
The advisory ended late Thursday morning as the fog cleared with the growing afternoon sunlight.
Forecasters expect an incoming cold front heavy with rain to help push out the smoke and prevent more super fog any time soon, Fox Weather said.
The death on I-10 comes just weeks after seven were killed and another over 160 people were injured in a massive pile-up on Interstate 55 last month due to another bout of super fog.
Haunting footage of the wreck showed dozens of burnt cars strewn across I-55 near New Orleans.
Police initially announced that there had been eight deaths in the pile-up but later lowered the death toll, citing initial difficulty in counting the victims because of the high number of vehicles and people involved.