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Mais il y a une heure, le brouillard est arrivé.

Mais il y a une heure, le brouillard est arrivé.
But an hour ago, the fog arrived.
From Lesson 183:Reported speech: future to conditional·French

Questions & Answers about Mais il y a une heure, le brouillard est arrivé.

I know il y a means "there is", so why does it translate to "ago" here?
When il y a is followed directly by an amount of time, it changes meaning to "ago". Therefore, il y a une heure means "an hour ago".
Why do we use est instead of a for the past tense of arriver?
Arriver is one of the specific verbs of motion or change of state (often called the Dr. Mrs. Vandertramp verbs) that require être as their helping verb in the passé composé, rather than avoir.
Does arrivé need to agree with the subject here?
Yes. Because it uses être as its helping verb, the past participle arrivé must agree with the subject le brouillard. Since brouillard is masculine and singular, arrivé doesn't need any extra letters added to the end.

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