So for those peole that live here in Utah you will most definitely hear the word inversion on the weather at least once every winter. Scientifically what it means, I think anyway, is that all the cold air get's trapped down in the valley and all the warm air is up in the mountains. What it means for those of us who live in it is that we're stuck in a winter smog belt, that's also very cold. What you can't see in the picture above, unless you look very carefully, is the 10,000 ft mountain right in the center. It's not simple fog, or even plain old haze, covering the mountain but trapped pollution mostly. It's air that's nasty to breathe, and if your some one who already has asthma or something similar you're screwed :) The other night I left work late and there was this film on my car window which I thought was the beginning of some good old frost so I ran the wiper blade over the window once. What scraped off the window was actually a line of black sludge. The news announced the other day that Provo had the 12th worst air quality in the entire country. Putting all of that aside, when it gets like this it also usually gets very foggy at night. Once the morning sun burns off that fog it's like waking to a fairy land of lacy trees. Ice crystals form on everything and for a brief moment that nasty sludgy air forms something beautiful. These were some pictures I took of it this morning. I guess there's a little bit of good in everything that happens if you're willing to look for it.
