Ice Fog Snared Weeds Like Mini Sculptures

Too bad it was so foggy that we didn’t venture out earlier. What a wonderful ice fog to behold!

Oncoming Headlights in the Ice Fog
Oncoming Headlights in the Ice Fog

Had we left the house any later we would have missed the beautiful display all along the back roads to the main highway.

Car lights beamed through the fog and the land on the mountain looked liked it was topped off by a giant cloud. You couldn’t see far at all, perhaps an 1/8 of a mile at most.

Mini-Sculptures of Ice on the Roadside Weeds
Mini-Sculptures of Ice on the Roadside Weeds

Then, at the side of the road the weeds glowed with an extra bright white. The once white and golden-flowering weeds were white with a heavy frost. But it seemed like such a thick frost we termed it an “ice fog” that gave us the beautiful icy mini-sculptures to ponder.

(Photos taken on Dec. 6, 2015. Click on any image to see a larger version.)

Ice Fog Envelopes Weeds
Ice Fog Envelopes Weeds

Elongated Ice Crystals Growing on Weeds
Elongated Ice Crystals Growing on Weeds

Even cooler than that were these ice crystals we saw on a few lower tree branches. We stopped at a pull-off next to a little church to get a closer look.

Ice Crystals On Tree Branches
Ice Crystals On Tree Branches

Ice Crystals On Spider Web
Ice Crystals On Spider Web

Ice crystals grew surprisingly long on the tree branches. Even the spiderwebs had a coating of ice crystals!

The air really was frigid and we felt the bone-chilling cold.

Trees In the Valley Coated with Ice Crystals
Trees In the Valley Coated with Ice Crystals

It was, after all, about 11 o’clock in the morning. There must have been plenty of time throughout the night and early morning for the ice crystals to form.

Soon after these photographs were taken the the temperature rose that final degree. Then everything was wet and the fog lifted away with the sunshine.

Foggy Mountain Top at the Old Cemetery
Foggy Mountain Top at the Old Cemetery

Several local folks commented that they hadn’t seen so many days of long-lasting fog ever before. In Central Pennsylvania there was just about whole week of extremely foggy mornings in early December 2015 with much of the fog and poor visibility lasting until near noontime, yet air temperature was in the 20s. On the mornings when the temperature was below freezing the roadside weeds formed these pretty mini ice sculptures.

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