Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Wednesday Vignette: Creeping fog or creepy fog?

I wasn't sure how to describe the fog I noticed early last Friday evening as I was finishing up my garden chores.  The way it crept along the edges of the harbor, surrounding but not engulfing it, made me think of an episode of Twilight Zone.  It was sunny and clear where I was standing and I could see blue sky above and beyond the fog, which moved in more like a wave than a blanket.

This is what I saw just after 6pm on Friday evening

Usually, when fog rolls in it envelops the entire harbor.  The lights in the harbor and the city beyond are "turned off" and after the sun goes down all you can see, if anything, are a few of the closest homes.  That never happened on Friday night.  The mass that surrounded the harbor looked more like clouds sitting on the surface of the water.  By the following morning it had retreated a ways but it still created the appearance of a low wall surrounding the harbor.
 
This is the view after sunrise the next morning

I did a little online surfing and the best explanation I could find suggests that what I saw wasn't fog at all but clouds, perhaps Arcus clouds, possibly of the roll cloud type.  Interesting but not Twilight Zone material.  If you've seen something similar or can offer a better explanation, let me know.

For other Wednesday Vignettes, visit Anna at Flutter & Hum.


All material © 2012-2021 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

12 comments:

  1. It's a cool effect. Years ago I visited Maui with my family. We drove up to the top of Haleakala and experienced a similar event. Everything below was cloud while we were up in the sun. It was a neat experience.

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    1. We're a little over 800 feet above sea level and we sometimes have clouds pass right through the garden but this is the first time I can remember seeing this particular effect.

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  2. Interesting phenomenon, weather is always surprising us!

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    1. The view we have at present probably just allows us to see cloud formations and weather anomalies that I just missed when our view consisted mainly of the walls of the houses surrounding us ;)

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  3. Fog events around San Francisco are really interesting. Most of the time I've observed them when going or coming back from SFO just south of the city. The fog tops the hills to the west and pours down to the valley below, sometimes back-lit by the setting sun. It looks very similar to your first photo, but imagine it engulfing a hill.

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    1. At the start, I thought that's what was going to happen in the harbor, Kathy, but the wave of moist air became more cloud like and, for whatever reason, it never moved into the harbor itself, remaining just outside its boundary like a sentry.

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  4. Interesting... I love fog. Several times, as I'm going to work in the morning, as I get off the freeway, I have been met with this amazingly thick, mysterious fog that envelops me and makes oncoming traffic look almost unreal. I always wonder why the fog starts there, and not closer to town. As for The Twilight Zone - we've been binge-watching it throughout the pandemic. Just love it, and is eternally grateful there are so many episodes.

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    1. Twilight Zones was/is the best of its genre in my view, Anna. I can still remember plot lines of many of the episodes, something I can't always say about books I read 2 months ago.

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  5. You often have interesting observations from your perch on the hill side.

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  6. Yes, there's an actual view here, Lisa, unlike the circumstances at our former home ;)

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  7. That certainly does look dramatic that one can easily be inspired to weave stories out of such phenomenon. Cool!!

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    1. Weaving stories, especially sinister ones, out of things like unusual fog was something Twilight Zone did well, which is probably what brought that series to mind.

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