Saturday, February 4, 2012

Fog's upside

Reader, so far the Very Exciting Plans to which I alluded in yesterday's post are on hold because of weather.  Surprise!  This morning, it was foggy again.

But the very enormous silver lining (or white lining, to be more specific) of fog is the potential for hoarfrost.  Hoarfrost, as I've discussed before at M&L, is one of my favorite things in the entire world.  Conditions have to be just right, so it only happens a few times per winter - and the trick is that it usually disappears by mid-morning.  The early bird gets the worm here, so to speak.

I headed out on a leisurely run - I'm racing a 5K tomorrow and today's only objective was to stretch out my legs - and made it literally 219 feet before I stopped and looked around in absolute wonder.  Here is the big picture of what I saw around St. Paul:



When I saw the hoarfrost back in Colorado, it was all in the context of this intense, bright sky, which created a brilliant mashup of dark branches and white hoarfrost against the blue.  I didn't get a chance to explore the hoarfrost on a smaller scale, because the big picture is what was so striking.

This morning, the sky was overcast until the very end of the run, so today it was all in the details.  I had a blast looking around the city.  It's, um, safe to say that I definitely wasn't in this run for pace.









Up close, it makes a branch look like cactus or barbed wire, doesn't it?  

This was a very good start to Saturday.

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