Four Interesting Fog Stories, Photos, Video
Henry and I spotted some four separate instances of interesting fog phenomena last week.
On Monday morning, we both saw steam fog simultaneously. He sighted his grill cover smoking, which was kind of freaking out his family.
The same morning on my drive to work, I spotted a bulldozer making fog. At first thought that colder dirt was exposed, causing the fog, but then after talking to Henry I realized that we are just having our first cold mornings this week, so the bulldozer had exposed warmer dirt, which, just like Henry`s grill when the sun hit it, produced steam fog, not unlike what you might see on a lake in the winter (the lake produces the warm, moist air), or on the road after a summer storm (the road creates it). This is the same situation that made Ron's Awesome Fog Timelapse video possible -- two air masses meet and cause fog. In this case, the warm, moist air was created by the warm, moist dirt.
All humility aside, I think that USAToday does a better job explaining it than either Henry or I did:
On Wednesday, we had an excellent situation (calm winds, cold temps) for radiational fog. Here the fog has layered nicely in the slight valley and field behind my house. The layers of radiation fog indicate different areas of temperatures, something you're familiar with if you've taken a bike ride in the evening and have felt sudden changes in temperature. Radiation fog is caused when air cools to it saturation point in valleys overnight.
The field behind my house is starting to show fall colors, even though the trees are not. This photo turned out unusually colorful and beautiful and I have added it to my best-of shots:
SEE ALL MY FOG PHOTOS FROM LAST WEEK
Then Friday morning we were socked in with dense fog, which my webcam showed (the trees which are nearly obscured at the bottom of the shot are about 20 feet from the camera, the field behind it which is completely obscured is another 5 feet out). I couldn't find a definition of what qualifies as zero visibility is (from this site, it looks like it's less than 1/16 of a mile, or 330 feet), but this must have been close to it. Here's a comparison of that scene and the normal webcam view:
