Then there are those days when you don't want to think about the big snowstorm and/or it's little brother of a snowstorm that will start up soon. Yes, yes, yes snow storms can be beautiful, and so can ice storms. But freezing fog, which is also can be dangerous, is more ethereal, and sadly much more rare.
It has been a long time since i saw the the breath taking beauty of freezing fog. Then it happened twice in just over a week.
Both times, it was an excuse for a long and slightly slippery drive on some secondary roads. slippery enough that my camera spent most it's ride under the front seat.
Freezing fog, hangs in the air, like plain fog, but it turns trees, buildings, fields and the roads into works of frosty art. But that was all i knew, so looked it up and found some information not only for me but for you. If you ever experience the mysterious beauty and icy surfaces caused by freezing fog. In my not so humble opinion,it has the magical appearance of otherworldlyness. Ice on trees created by freezing rain makes everything gleam like quartz crystal with the winder suns' brilliance. Freezing fog is like an eternity of crystalized brushstrokes
A cloud, is just fog that forms above the ground, what forms near the ground, say 6 feet or less is fog, and both can contain ice crystals. There are several types of fog.
What is freezing fog? Here's what's behind a first-of-its-kind advisory from NWS Pittsburgh.
By Trey Fulbright
/ CBS Pittsburgh
The fog on Thursday morning prompted the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh to issue a freezing fog advisory for some counties where the temperature was at or below freezing.
This was the first time this office has issued a freezing fog advisory, but other National Weather Service offices across the country have been doing this for years and continue to issue this when warranted.
Freezing fog itself is not a regular occurrence, but it is also not a rare phenomenon and has occurred many times before in western Pennsylvania and other parts of the world.
Fog is essentially a cloud based near ground level. Most clouds are made up of supercooled liquid water droplets that can exist in temperatures as cold as -10 degrees to -40 degrees (aka well below freezing). When these droplets interact with a surface that is at or below freezing, they can freeze on contact, creating a coating of ice. These droplets can also create a coating of rime ice on trees and other exposed surfaces as shown in the figure below.
Believe it or not, anytime we fly through clouds that are made of liquid droplets, we are essentially dealing with the same phenomenon just thousands of feet above ground.
