A Very Foggy Morning at My Farm
The landscape looks so mysterious shrouded in thick fog.
Do you get a lot of fog where you live? My Bedford, New York farm is in close proximity to a reservoir, where early patches of fog are quite common. Fog is essentially made up of condensed water droplets - a result of the air being cooled to the point where it can no longer hold all the water vapor it contains. It can be thin or thick - sometimes so thick it obscures the road and other objects ahead making it difficult for driving or even walking. One day last week, I woke up to a very dense fog, which covered the area for several hours.
It was a great opportunity to capture some photos of this atmospheric phenomenon, enjoy.
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- It’s hard to see where this road turns. This is the carriage road leading to my home – my tall stand of bald cypress trees is on the left and my long and winding pergola is on the right. In the distance, there are many trees still showing off their fall colors, but heavy fog blocks them all.
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- This is my allée of pin oaks. These tall majestic trees look bewildering in the fog. At the end is a carriage road intersection, but the thick fog makes it impossible to see.
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- On this foggy morning it was even difficult to see trees up close. These are two of my American beech trees, still holding tight to their leaves.
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- This view through the woodland is also very foggy – only the green and yellow foliage of the tree on the left stands out. Fog can form in two ways: either by cooling the air to its dew point or by evaporation and mixing – this happens often when the earth radiates heat at night or in the early morning.
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- Fog happens when it is very humid. There has to be a lot of water vapor in the air for fog to form. This is one of the most popular vantage points at the farm – the foot of the carriage road leading to the woodlands and my hayfields.
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- And don’t confuse fog and mist. Fog is denser than mist. This means fog contains more water molecules in the same amount of space. Fog cuts visibility down to six-tenths of a mile while mist can reduce visibility to about one to 1.2 miles.
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- In between the trees and the fenced-in paddocks, one can barely see the giant dark green white pines in the distance – but they’re there.
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- Even with the dense fog, my outdoor grounds crew keeps busy with all the autumn leaf blowing. It is hard to keep up with it – there are so many leaves to blow this time of year.
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- Some of the ginkgo trees have already lost their leaves but many tend to lose all their leaves at the same time. As the weather gets colder, the petioles get what’s called scars to protect the tree from disease after the leaves fall. After the hard frost sweeps down the east coast, this ginkgo, and others at the farm, will drop its leaves to the ground leaving a gorgeous carpet of color below.
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- This is the view through this grove of dawn redwoods, Metasequoia. These are so pretty in fall. They have feathery, fine-textured needles that are approximately a half-inch long. And look at its bark. The bark of the dawn redwood becomes deeply fissured as the tree matures.
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- This photo shows the thick fog just past the weeping branches of the willow.
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- Here’s more fog seen from the fence of my run-in horse paddock. The thicker the fog, the longer it takes to dissipate. This fog lasted until mid to late morning.
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- This view is in the back hayfield looking at the trees – one can barely see their outline.
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- At the upper edge of my back hayfield was a family of wild turkeys walking single file across the grass. They seemed un-phased by the foggy conditions.
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- At the far end of the back hayfield is my giant sycamore tree, the symbol of my farm. This tree is among the largest of the trees on the property.
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- This is a view looking down a section of my Linden Tree Allée – one of two at the farm. At the end is the carriage road to my home – hard to see, but it’s there.
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- Do you know what’s ahead in this photo? This image was taken from my Boxwood Allée looking toward my stable at the end.
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- This view is from my Boxwood Allée looking at my new living maze – look long enough and see the outline of the trees in the distance. Do you know… the foggiest place in the world is Grand Banks, off the island of Newfoundland, Canada? The cold Labrador current from the north and the warm Gulf Stream current from the east create just the right conditions for thick fog to form almost every day of the year.
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- Here’s a look across a pasture to another section of the Linden Tree Allée. This entire allée runs from the old corn crib all the way down to the vegetable garden.
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- The sun tried hard to shine through the clouds. All the fog was gone by afternoon, when the skies were blue and the temperatures hit nearly 74-degrees Fahrenheit. Today is also expected to be unseasonably warm, and then tomorrow, autumn weather returns with temperatures expected to drop to the 50s.
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