steamy mornings
Posted on January 17, 2006
Filed Under bikes
A slideshow I put together and posted here back in December has been getting a lot of attention – especially from people far from North Carolina. It’s a handful of photographs I took one morning on my ride to work. It was a humid, cool morning. The steam rising from the ground created a pretty unusual scene.
A few folks have asked me what causes these gorgeous conditions. I don’t know… I’m just the photographer. So, I turned to some experts for an explanation.
Walter Denman, a meteorologist with AllExperts.com, had this to say: You picked the correct word in “steamy” as this is commonly refered to as steam fog. It is evaporation that is visible when the temperature is low enough (early in the mornings) to see it. When you are able to exhale steam on a crisp morning it is similiar. Go[sic] to Wikipedia for some pics and explanations. Hope this helps and thanks for asking. Walter
Chris Thompson, a local meterologist with WRAL-TV and a fellow cyclist, had a more thorough and insightful answer. Beautiful pictures! Good question too. Part of the issue with these “steamy” mornings is when the ground surface temperature cools down, and we get a warmer, more humid air mass in place. The air near the surface cools down to the dew point, the air becomes saturated, and we see this localized fog form. This is very common in the Midwest in the spring when warm air moves over the snow pack, the meteorological term is “Advection Fog”.
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