NOTE: This page will soon be moved! It will be archived for eternity (more or less) as the January 28th, 2004 edition of The OCS/Mesonet Ticker

Okies don't see ice fog very often. So, when we accompanied a very shallow, extremely cold, and synoptically stubborn airmass in the Salt Lake Valley, we were amazed.

A blurry pic (they get better, I promise) of a fruit tree in an Ogden supermarket parking lot. We thought this was extraordinary, but the next 12 hours would put this image to shame:

20040109_ogden_1.jpg


The same tree, closer up. Notice the preferred development of ice on the windward side of the branches. The wind was light, but noticable and consistent (I'm guessing 2 mph?). The direction and magnitude varied throughout the valley.

20040109_ogden_2.jpg


A few miles north, the icing habit was noticably different. Some of these needles were more than an inch long:

20040109_northogden_1.jpg


We finally gave into the fog and crashed at a small motel in Tremonton. Here's our side view mirror after about an hour of driving (slowly) in the ice fog. I wish we got a picture of the front of the car: it looked like an icy beard!

20040109_tremonton.jpg


The scene outside of our motel the next morning was spectacular. These trees aren't covered in snow. They're covered in frost! Notice that the frost developed all over each branch, suggesting that the winds were calm (which they were). Also, the habit is unmistakably dendritic (opposed to the needling we saw near SLC). The following three pictures show the trees in increasing detail.

20040110_tremonton_3.jpg

20040110_tremonton_2.jpg

20040110_tremonton_1.jpg