Just last night, I told @Maique that we almost never get fog. Naturally, I woke up to this:

That curling cloud on the valley floor is fog, if you’re in the right place at the right time. But that whole thing blew away within minutes. Deep, enduring fog is just a cloud bank on the ground, requiring atmosphere saturated with moisture and little wind. Conditions here in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada are usually just the opposite.

Moist air arriving from the west gets sapped of moisture by the cold heights, and the Great Basin and Range to the east provides an endless absence of humidity. And the air is rarely still here. With an altitude change of 10,000 feet over just a few miles, and three large canyons funneling cold air to the valley floor, turbulence is the norm.

So yes, we get fog, but you’ve gotta be quick to see it from the inside. It took two days of steady drizzle to get this fleeting bit.

Rain brings new faces. This bird was preening on the snag this morning, and I managed to catch it in full voice. I can only imagine it is yelling, “Finally! Fog!”