CALGARY, Alberta – An ultra-rare weather phenomenon happened last Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) in downtown Calgary when a rogue Arctic air mass descended suddenly one foggy morning and froze the dense fog before it could disperse. 2P News could find no record of such an event occurring anytime in Calgary’s past, although we didn’t look all that hard. Ditto for other parts of Canada. The Russians will claim they invented it first.
Climatologist Dr. Freas N. Colt of the University of Calgary was astounded by the phenomenon.
Dr. Freas N. Colt, UofC
“I looked out the window and the fog wasn’t swirling around at all like it usually does. I put on my overcoat and gloves and went outside to find that the fog literally shattered as I walked through it. If you listened closely you could hear a delightful tinkling sound.” – Dr. Colt
The frozen fog was so lightweight that no one suffered any ill effects from an encounter with it. Upon contact with any warm surface such as bare skin the fog instantly melted and disappeared.
By late morning a warm chinook wind had blown in and removed all the frozen fog. The moisture content of the fog was so slight that not even a wet spot on the pavement was left. The local office of the Meteorological Service of Canada unfortunately doesn’t open until noon and was unable to record any useful information about the event, so nobody outside of Calgary will believe it happened.
Dr. Glew Hardin, a materials science professor also at the University of Calgary likened the frozen fog to an aerogel, which can be defined as a solid material of extremely low density, produced by removing the liquid component from a conventional gel. When asked by 2P News if the frozen fog had any practical applications he replied, “Nope, not a one, the stuff’s too fragile and ephemeral. It’s just something interesting in the atmosphere, like a rainbow or sundogs.”
