In The United States
In the western United States, ice fog may be referred to as pogonip. It occurs very rarely during cold winter spells, usually in deep mountain valleys. Ice fog can be quite common in interior and northern Alaska, since the temperature frequently drops below -40 °C (-40 °F) in the winter months. Pogonip only forms under specific conditions, the humidity has to be near 100% as the air temperature drops to well below 0 °C (32 °F), allowing ice crystals to form in the air. The ice crystals will then settle onto surfaces.
The word pogonip is derived from the Shoshone word paγi̵nappi̵h, meaning cloud. Supposedly, early settlers called it "white death" because they believed the crystals got into their lungs and caused death.
In The Old Farmer's Almanac, in the calendar for December, the phrase "Beware the Pogonip" regularly appears. In Smoke Bellew Jack London described Pogonip which happened to the main characters, killing one of them.
Read more about this topic: Ice Fog
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)
“Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)