Thread: Strange mist
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Old June 9th 07, 06:46 PM posted to uk.sci.weather
Kate Brown Kate Brown is offline
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First recorded activity by Weather-Banter: Jan 2005
Posts: 161
Default Strange mist

In article .com,
dated Sat, 9 Jun 2007, Dick Lovett wrote
On Jun 9, 1:13 pm, Trevor Harley wrote:
This morning, as I satshivering in the haar, I noticed a light mist
drifting a foot or so above the soil of a ploughed field behind my
house.

In twenty years of weather watching I've never seen anything like it.
At first I thought it was dust being stirred up by the light SE wind,
or smoke, but it was a very local mist hugging the ground, drifting,
coming and going, on the wind, just above the bare earth.

Photographs are at:

http://web.mac.com/trevor.harley/iWe...st%20Roll.html

They were taken just before midday. Temperature was 16C, the haar had
lifted a bit and the sun was just starting to shine faintly through the
low-level clouds.

What's the physics I find it hard to believe the soil is cooling the air.

Trevor
Dismal Dundee


It looks like Arctic Sea Smoke, also known as steam fog. The damp soil
has been heated sufficiently by the sunshine to
set up weak thermals of moist air which readily condense in the
relatively cool air just above the surface.


I've seen it in, of all places, Eltham (and also in France). Very
spooky, but it disappears once the sun gets a little bit warmer. Did
yours?

--
Kate B

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