Dense fog advisory warns Val Verde County drivers through midmorning

Dense fog blanketed Val Verde County before sunrise, and the National Weather Service kept the advisory in effect until 10 a.m., warning that visibility could drop to one quarter mile or less and make driving hazardous. For anyone heading out before midmorning, the county was dealing with a real visibility problem, not just a gray start to the day.

The National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio office issued the advisory at 6:02 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, and had already flagged reduced visibility in a special weather statement at 4:59 a.m. that covered Val Verde County and Del Rio. The fog safety guidance is blunt about why that matters: dense fog advisories are issued when visibility is expected to fall to a quarter-mile or less across a significant area.

That timing put the most difficult conditions squarely in the early morning hours, when school traffic, commuters and work crews are most likely to be on the road. In Del Rio, Comstock and Langtry, drivers on rural roads and city streets faced the same problem, because fog does not stay within town limits. Long sight lines disappear quickly, lane markings become harder to follow and familiar routes can feel unfamiliar in a matter of seconds.

The broader weather area named by forecasters included Del Rio, Brackettville, Uvalde, Hondo and San Antonio, showing that the fog was part of a regional system rather than a spotty patch over one neighborhood. For Val Verde County drivers, that meant the safer choice was to slow down, leave extra space and expect conditions to change fast from one stretch of road to the next until the advisory expired later in the morning.

County leadership listed on the Val Verde County government website includes County Judge Lewis Owens and Commissioners Kerr Wardlaw, Juan Carlos Vazquez, Fernando Garcia and Gustavo “Gus” Flores. Their offices are the ones local residents look to if fog-related delays, school changes or travel safety concerns ripple through the morning. By late morning, the advisory was set to lift, but until then the county’s roads carried the kind of low-visibility risk that can turn a routine drive into a dangerous one.