Predicting Fog

I'd like to get some sunrise photos of a local lake inlet, and I was wondering if there are any rules of thumb for predicting when there might be a nice blanket of fog. I imagine temperature and precipitation of at least the previous and current day are factors, but correct me if I'm wrong.

 

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Of course I could just wake up at 5:00 every day for as long as it takes, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel; I want to be as sharp as possible when I do find what I'm looking for.

 

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Thanks in advance.

Fog occurs when the temperature of the air and the dew point are the same (or nearly the same) If you keep up with your local forcasts and look at these 2 things the night before, you should be able to do better then just looking out the window every morning @5:00am.

 

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Maybe you could get a better response by posting this question on weather.net rather then here. ;-)

 

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Good luck.

I have often found fog in the morning if there was a clear sky (or minimal clouds) the night before and the tempeture dropped during the night. If the air is colder than the water in the lake, there is a good chance of fog. This occurs most often in the fall.

Water heats/cools at a slower rate than air, any time the ambient air temp is about 15 degrees higher or lower than water temp (and there is no wind) you will get fog/mist...the greater the temp difference the more pronounced fog/mist. Determine a good position to the west of where the sun rises, with water between you and the rising sun (low level light will enhance fog/mist) and check temp each night before you go to bed, and check forecast for the following morning, if you have a 15-20 degree difference (and no wind) you will get fog/mist that is heavy enough to be impressive. Hope this helps

If there's rain predicted for a day or two ahead, get out there at sunrise and you may find the mist/fog has a wonderful red glow.

 

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P.S. -- I do get up almost every morning of the summer at 5:00 a.m. to check conditions. Even if you don't get the fog you want in this instance, there's often a lot of beautiful nature shots to had on a lake first thing in the morning.