Winter Light, XIX: Cold Foggy Morning, 1/1/12

Woodbury, Connecticut

The first morning of the year was foggy, and cold. That's weird. At about seven AM the temperature was in the mid-twenties (minus 3-5 degrees Celsius) with thick fog everywhere, and heavy frost on the car windows that I didn't even try to attack with a scraper. I'm environmentally conscious enough—and cheap enough—that I hate warming up a car at idle so its systems will melt the ice. But the thick coat of ice made it clear I was going to have to throw a few ounces of gas at the problem, go inside and have a little more coffee, and then get out to shoot. So where is the fog coming from? Frozen air should have no moisture in it. There had to be a front of warmer air moving through to cause this, but at nine the air temperature had still not reached the freezing point (according to my car's computer) but voluminous fog was still wafting from small streams and just about everywhere else. A front of warmer air may well have been the cause, by noon the temperature had soared to a couple degrees above 50.