Q and A

Q: Have you ever experienced a “pogonip,” a.k.a. “frost smoke” and “white death?”
A: It’s tiny ice crystals suspended near the ground as a mist or fog, says Randy Cerveny in “Freaks of the Storm.” When warm air from a valley rises up into a cold wind blowing lengthwise, a freezing fog can descend and cover everything with minute frost crystals. A five-day pogonip - the term coined by Native Americans of Nevada - in January 1892 deposited a coating of ice 2 inches thick on trees, buildings, cattle and people! “I personally saw one in Antarctica in 1987. It appeared as a bright line of frosty white on the horizon and trekked across the flat ice sheet for several hours before reaching our camp. We were encased in a white featureless tomb.”
Observers in Greenland dubbed it “frost smoke,” noting it could cause blisters on the face or hands. Some Native Americans believed the “white death” could rupture the lungs. Indeed in the late 1800s, a group in Colorado reportedly took sick with violent coughs and fever after passing through a pogonip, causing one death.