Ulm, Land of Frozen Fog

I've started to realise recently just how cold it is going to get in Ulm.  As I write this my PC's weather gadget says that it's -2 degrees centigrade outside, and I have a feeling it's going to get much colder before it gets warmer!  Thank heaven I'm going to the Great Barrier Reef to sit under a palm tree next week!

Along with the cold, there's been a lot of fog recently.  In fact almost every day for the past month has been so foggy that I can't even see the building where I work (and it's a big building) when I get off of the bus!  I first started noticing it about a month ago.

Some fog on the approach to work, about a month ago

The picture above was when the fog first started to appear.  It was to get much worse before long!  Here is another picture taken from out of my office window a few days later.

The fog gets thicker!

Ok, we've all seen fog.  There's nothing special about that, although this fog was starting to get thick enough to go into the special "Holy cow, look at that" category, especially at night when waiting for the bus at 5:30 pm when it was pitch black and all you could see up the road was a line of footpath lights trailing away into the fog...

But then something really strange happened.  Something that I've never heard of before and certainly never thought I'd see - the temperature dropped rapidly to negative and all of the thick fog that was hanging around actually froze and dropped to the ground.  Here is that same view out of my office window this morning, taken from almost the same position as the photo above:

No, it's not snow - it's frozen fog!

By later on this afternoon so much fog had frozen and fallen to the ground that the sky started to turn blue and the sun came out.  Walking to work this morning it was quite odd because I had particles of frozen fog collecting on my jacket and they looked like tiny snowflakes, but there were no clouds in the sky - if I looked up I could just see the blue of the sky showing through the fog.

The frozen fog also presents a strange sight when it lands on trees and other objects, because unlike snow, which only gathers on the top of objects, the frozen fog collects all around the object - top, bottom and both sides!

Fog covered branches

And finally one last photo - about the only bright and colourful spot in a sea of grey!