Photos: Lingering days of hoarfrost

The weather here, like so many other places this year, has been crazy. In a normal winter, we have at least two blizzards (though we've had as many as eight in a single winter); we have at least a couple of weeks of -30° F temps (our lowest low ever was -43° F); and the high temp usually doesn't get above 32° F for at least the four months of November, December, January, and February.

This year, however, we've barely had any negative temperatures, much less our standard -30° F. We've spent the whole winter with our highs hovering between 20° F and 33° F, and we haven't had a single blizzard (we even had the first brown Christmas I can remember, though we do have some snow now). We had rain (freezing rain, to be precise) last week.

This weird warmth is behind our latest phenomenon: three straight days and nights of freezing fog.

It's wonderfully creepy!

 

And it's beautiful. These are real, living trees, flocked only by mother nature:

While some things are made more beautiful by the freezing fog, some things are made menacing. My harmless little hops vine looks like something barbed and toothy and deadly.

Doesn't it look like it's going to shoot out a vine, wrap it around your ankle, and drag you into it's brown maw?

And here are the little frosted hops in close-up view:

So we certainly can't complain about the North Dakota winter this year.

But what does this mean for summer? Should I start ordering banana trees for my garden?