Fog, Dew and Frost

Evaporation or Mixing Fog

This type of fog forms when sufficient water vapour is added to the air by evaporation and the
moist air mixes with cooler, relatively drier air. The two common types are steam fog and frontal
fog.

Steam fog forms when cold air moves over warm water. When the cool air mixes with the warm
moist air over the water, the moist air cools until its humidity reaches 100% and fog forms. This
type of fog takes on the appearance of wisps of smoke rising off the surface of the water.

Frontal fog is the other type of evaporation fog. This type of fog forms when warm raindrops
evaporate into a cooler drier layer of air near the ground. Once enough rain has evaporated into
the layer of cool surface, the humidity of this air reaches 100% and fog forms.

Ice Fog
This type of fog forms when the air temperature is well below freezing and is composed entirely of
tiny ice crystals that are suspended in the air. Ice fog will only be witnessed in cold Arctic / Polar
air. Generally the temperature will be 14 F (-10 C) or colder in order for ice fog to occur.

Freezing Fog
Freezing fog occurs when the water droplets that the fog is composed of are "supercooled".
Supercooled water droplets remain in the liquid state until they come into contact with a surface
upon which they can freeze. As a result, any object the freezing fog comes into contact with will
become coated with ice.

The same thing happens with freezing rain or drizzle.

Fog, Mist and Haze

- Fog (FG) is defined as being visibility of < 1,000m due to liquid particles or ice crystals
suspended in the atmosphere. RH is taken to be 100%.

- Mist (BR) is defined as being reduced visibility > = 1,000m but not more than 5,000m due to the
presence of water droplets in the atmosphere. RH may be assumed to be around 95%.

- According to ICAO, haze (HZ) or smoke (FU), is reduced visibility due to the presence of solid
particles (lithometeors) in the atmosphere to a value of < = 5,000m.

- MIFG (Shallow Fog) is 5 feet deep.

- The type of obscuration - Mist, Haze, Smoke, Dust or Sand - is not normally quoted if the
visibility is more than 5000m.

- Radiation fog is generally 500 feet thick, need winds of about 2-8 knots.

- For advection fog, 15 knots wind is needed. High winds can lift advection fog into low stratus or
clear it altogether by turbulent mixing. It depends on the gap between the surface temperature
and the dew point temperature of the air mass. If the surface temperature is well below the air
mass dew point the advection fog will persist in winds as high as 30 to 40kt.

You can see further in mist than in fog. By international convention, visibility in fog is less than 1
km, which is the definition, used in shipping and aviation forecasts. However, in forecasts for the
general public in Britain, fog refers to visibility of less than 200 yards. Both mist and fog are
caused by microscopic water droplets suspended in the air. The visibility depends on how far light
can travel before too much of it is randomly scattered by hitting droplets. The bigger and closer
together the droplets are the smaller this distance is.

In mist the droplets are very tiny, in fog they are bigger. When droplets exceed about 200
micrometres in diameter they tend to fall earthwards and are called drizzle. Mizzle is a mixture of
mist and drizzle, also known as Scotch Mist. Water droplets in mist, fog or clouds do not evaporate
because the air is saturated or very close to it, (the relative humidity is between 100% and 95%).

Haze is another term for reduced visibility but the particles in suspension which cause haze are dry
and the relative humidity is below 95%. It is possible, though rare, to get dry fog which is haze
with visibility below 1km.