We are on the sixth full day of freezing fog, which started on the evening of December 30. In Paris it snowed, and relatives sent beautiful pictures of it on rooftops and gardens, but I still find the frost and fog more beautiful. It is cold, but no colder on the thermometer than New Jersey, and because the air is moist the “feels-like” temperature is usually about 10ºF warmer than NJ. The air is cold on the skin (it was 19ºF/-7C at 8:00), but mostly not the bone freezing cold I’ve never quite become used to in the US — which is good because most people seem to lack what I would call winter apparel and were walking around in Gaillac with light jackets, sweaters, scarfs, and hats but no long coats (as was I, actually, although I do have an amazing Sevdiea heated vest).
In Mouzieys, the fog burned off slightly by mid-afternoon, but the sun was very half-hearted about it and not really visible beyond a hazy disk. And we did not have the usual inversion where Cordes peeks out of the surrounding fog/clouds on one side of the valley, with Mouzieys clear on the other side. Today, we were all swaddled in freezing clouds as you see in this picture taken from the road below Andrée’s house, looking down the valley to Église Saint-Michel. Cordes is usually visible in the top half of that view but today we couldn’t even see the foothills.
This afternoon, in Caussade, it was as cold as the thermometer said. Colder. I took my nephew over to the gym in Gaillac this morning and there the “feels like” was in our favor; however, in Caussade where we took the other nephew to get the 16:50 train to Paris the opposite was true. The air temperature recorded as 28ºF, (-2ºC) but the “feels like” was 23ºF (-5ºC) and it felt even colder to me. There was also no fog, so there was no frost by late afternoon.
We still have frost, more layers of it each day, and the plants and leaves look like victims of an over-enthusiastic holiday froster. At this point I’m concerned about the china berries on the three trees that support the hammocks—right—which look more like white blackberries, but if they don’t drop their purple juice all over the hammocks in a few months that will be a plus as long as the trees aren’t damaged.
The Wolf Moon (December 3)
Early in this cold snap, the frost started coming in about the same time as the fog, generally by 9pm. As the ground grew colder the frost hung around all day, and when the sun was able to burn a little thin patch in the fog it was not strong enough to melt the ice nor burn off all of the fog, so it got colder and more frozen. Like a Christmas card.
On January 3rd the fog came later although the moon did have an ice halo. This picture was taken by my nephew, Boo, just after moonrise. It was a beautiful moon.
