Troubled winter has moved back in with us; but, as usual, we don’t know how long she’ll be able to stay. Here you see our first significant sea smoke of the year swarming across Naskeag Harbor yesterday.
The smoke also raced low and fast down Eggemoggin Reach.:
Sea smoke, also known as frost smoke, is a form of fog that is created when very cold winds flow over significantly warmer sea waters. When this happens, the winds enter the layer of moisture-saturated, semi-warm air just above the water surface.
That saturated warmer air layer is cooled by the winds to below the layer’s dew point, which causes the layer to shed some of its water in the form of vapors. These vapors condense into frosted “smoke.” The process is somewhat similar to the creation of “steam” when a bowl of hot soup is served in cooler air.
When these images were taken, the recorded ambient temperature here was 1 degree (F), with a wind chill of minus 14; the wind was at 10 miles per hour with gusts of 24, and the water temperature was 45.4 degrees, according to local reports. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 11, 2022.