Weather Words: Socked In

If you ever hear the phrase “We’re socked in,” there’s a pretty good chance you will encounter a flight delay.

When meteorologists say an area is “socked in,” they’re talking about conditions where visibility is so reduced that you can barely see one hundred feet in front of you. It usually happens when low clouds, fog, or mist settle in and refuse to budge, leaving everything looking gray, hazy, and closed off. The landscape gets swallowed up, mountains disappear, skylines fade, and even nearby buildings can seem to vanish.

“Socked in” is a reference to wind socks, the cloth tubes mounted on masts in order to indicate wind direction on runways. When the clouds were very low or visibility was bad enough that the wind sock couldn’t be seen, the airport was deemed to be “socked in.”

Being “socked in” doesn’t always mean stormy or dangerous weather, it’s just that visibility is dramatically reduced and conditions are slow to change. It’s one of those terms that perfectly captures the mood of the moment: quiet, muted, and sealed off from the outside world.

Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.