When you can see, you aren't following too close. Suddenly, you can't see, and you're following too close.
Twice that I can recall I've been driving when suddenly I ran into a wall of white out conditions, like someone flipped a switch. You look up ahead and you can see just fine, then all of a sudden, while you're looking at traffic 1000 or 2000 feet ahead of you, without warning, you can't see anything. It's like someone out of the blue laid a white sheet on your windshield. It's not like you can see this wall of snow up ahead and you're driving towards it, about to hit it, like you can with a wall of burning smoke or a dust storm out west. You don't see that wall at all. Everything's clear, then suddenly it's not.
It's kinda like when you're driving in North or South Dakota and there's snow blowing all over the place, but you can still see clearly, even at night. Then a big truck passes you, dragging snow behind it, and instantly you're blind for 15 seconds, hoping and praying the road doesn't curve even a little bit for the next 1500 feet. You take your foot completely off the gas, but you're still blind, and now you're going slow enough that truck after truck starts repeating the process. It's fun.
