It was foggy Wednesday night, so much so that on my way home from work, I turned on the car’s fog light. This is a thing new to me since I emigrated to Ireland. It’s one blindingly red light under just one taillight at the back of your car, and it shows up really well in the fog. I didn’t have anyone come up behind me to test how well it worked. I could see that the cat’s eyes in the road behind me were now blood red. Did you know that the cat’s eye centre marker was invented by an Irishman? Now you do.
Anyhoo. The thick fog and 1° C temp meant that the car was covered in a thin sheen of ice on Thursday morning. It wasn’t a bother to me. I lived in Ohio for years, so a skin of ice is nothing at all. Snow deep enough to cover your license plate? That’s a bother.
But back to the ice. It was dammed beautiful from inside the Mini. I got in, sat down and said wow.
I’d already started the car so had to rush like mad to take these before the defroster melted it away.
The short and beautiful life of windscreen (windshield) frost.
heretherebespiders 
Pretty amazing…looks cold! (in any case, experience or not, drive carefully..we’d miss your chats)
It was a tiny bit slippy on the roads, but again – no bother!
I call that “fleurs de neige.” Here it usually appears as something more snowflake shaped. Regional climate variation?
I thought it was because it was frozen fog, perhaps?
It had to be very humid to make these patterns. We have a humid climate, and I don’t remember having seen such big ones. So your explanation sure makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how you got that ice on your windshield at 1ºC. But I must trust your reading, because just one degree below that the fog should have condensed and fell to the ground.
I admit ice on the windshield may look really good. But most of the time, my concern is not to look at it, but how long I can wait for it to melt without getting late. I usually calculate if I could take it off with some windshield washer without screwing the environment, or freeze my ass out to scratch it off.
It wasn’t 1° when the fog was coming down, it just gradually got colder overnight. It was so thin the inside defroster did the job.
However – the damn washer fluid lines freeze solid unless we get antifreeze washer fluid. Which we can’t find. Sigh.
Really? We have “summer” and “winter” fluid, but almost nobody uses the “summer” one. We don’t one any able to freeze to be left when winter goes again, as we know it could damage stuff (break the lines).
Too funny – writing that reminded me to remind him, as he was doing the weekly shop. He’d already found some!
True, we get little real fog here — only the overnight condensation. Tonight here there is oddly a “fog advisory.”
Fleurs de neige, I’ll remember that one 🙂
:D! Sometimes when I grope for the *mot juste* it comes to me in French or German even though I can only claim four years of school French and German from singing. You are the first genuine French speaker who ever commented on terms I mostly use in my own head.
Amazing and beautiful photos!
Thank you! It’s hard to remember sometimes to look at the pretty things and not just the annoying things. This qualified as both, ha!
That says a lot about you that you noticed the beauty in something that would just be considered an irritant to most! Good for you!
It is hard to remember to see, sometimes, instead of just look. I think that is one thing that I’ve learned by having a good camera to hand all the time – even if it is ‘just’ my phone.
It’s absolutely beautiful. I wouldn’t be able to recognise where it was taken if you hadn’t have said! I don’t envy you though. Brrr!
I don’t mind the cold! I love the sunshine, but I am more than happy to have a change of seasons. Hot all the time gets old! Thank you 🙂
That’s one thing I miss living here – there are no seasons, only hot and humid year round. I love Autumn and Spring!
Ireland…my family hailed from there so long, long ago everyone forgot where! But My Brother and My Mother got to go visit and fell inlove again!
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Hi! Same with part of my family – we’ve tried and tried but can’t figure it out. I’ve made Mayo my home, and I love it! Nice to meet you!