Freezing Fog and Rime

I'm not going to officially blame the light snow showers in Sioux Falls this morning on the fog, but it could be very well the cause of the flurries because the fog gave the atmosphere some moisture to work with that could have in turned caused the atmosphere to squeeze out some snow. If nothing else, the fog is the reason you're going to see a picturesque scene throughout the day today. Areas of patchy fog provided enough moisture in the air to give trees, plants and other objects a bit of a moist coating. Since it was cold enough this morning, some of that moisture froze and produced what we call "rime". So what exactly is rime? There's actually two different types: soft rime and hard rime.
Soft rime is basically white ice that's formed when water droplets suspended in fog freezes to the surface of an object, most of the time soft rime is found on the windward side (the side facing the wind, so today the southern side) of things. It looks like little ice needles or feathers and you can easily brush it off or shake it from trees and plants.
Hard rime is basically a more dense formation of soft rime but it doesn't shake off or brush off of objects as easily. Hard rime looks a little more like an ice-like layer cover the object.
In addition to that, the light snow showers fell (whether fog-induced or not) the snowflakes adhered to the moisture on the trees and plants and other objects creating a cool crystallizing effect show here in Sioux Falls this morning.

Enjoy the "rime" scenery!

~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka