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Posts Tagged ‘fog’

Going Backwards in Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 11, 2022| 11 Comments »

A girl photographs a bridge over the foggy Seekonk River.

What’s been hard about the most recent iteration of the pandemic is the feeling of going backwards. For a while, there was a sense of forward movement even though we were still taking some precautions. But with Omicron so transmissible, many of us chose isolation again.

It hit me right before Christmas when a friend stopped by. We both had had three vaccine shots and were used to being together without masks, but because I knew that some of her coworkers were not wearing masks, I decided we had better go back to masking when together. Sure enough, not long after that she caught Covid from a coworker. (Doing OK, thanks to the shots.)

Most of my photos reflect the grayness of this period. The view below of the Sudbury River was taken on New Year’s Day: outlook foggy.

I took a lot of snow photos, as you can see, but I’m also including a sunny one of the library’s brand-new children’s wing, several pictures from friends (Kim Gaffet’s snowy owl, a tiny island that Jean Devine’s students planted last summer), and scenes in Providence yesterday (the girl photographing a fogged-in bridge, an icy sandbox, a pond starting to melt). Sandra M. Kelly made the 2022 photo of snow in New Shoreham, where heavy snow is a rare event.

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Fog Sculpture Comes to Boston

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 4, 2018| 6 Comments »

fogsculpturerenderingoverfranklinparkbostonma

Photo: Emerald Necklace Conservancy
Starting August 11, five “fog sculptures” by artist Fujiko Nakaya will grace the string of Boston parks known as the Emerald Necklace until the end of October. Nakaya uses a system of pumps, pressurized hoses, and ultrafine nozzles to create her sculptures.

You can make art from almost anything, but you need an artist’s imagination to see the possibilities. I notice that in my grandchildren, who take on creative projects that seem impossible to dull adults — like making a necklace with a heavy rock and some paper. In this story, artist Fujika Nakaya saw the possibilities of fog.

As Graham Ambrose reports at the Boston Globe, “The Emerald Necklace, Boston’s 7-mile pendant of parks built in the 19th century, will soon have a new adornment: a string of artworks made from water vapor.

“This summer, artist Fujiko Nakaya will debut ‘fog sculptures’ at five sites along the Necklace. The immersive sculptures — wafting clouds of machine-made mist — will be viewable from dawn to dusk between Aug. 11 and Oct. 31. …

“Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston hailed the project, calling the Emerald Necklace ‘a crown jewel in the City of Boston’ in a statement to the Globe. ‘Similar to the intent of the Emerald Necklace, art has a connecting power, bringing together people from all different backgrounds and all different places.’ …

“Nakaya, born in Japan in 1933, calls fog ‘the most generous of mediums.’ Since 1969 she has built more than 80 fog sculptures across four continents, transforming open spaces into dreamlike landscapes with custom-designed installations. …

Fog is living and dying. It condenses and evaporates simultaneously, with dynamism and vulnerability. It is a positive and negative,” Nakaya told the Globe. …

“To create her sculptures, which emit fog in controlled intervals, Nakaya uses a patented system of pumps, pressurized hoses, and ultrafine nozzles. Computer software receives weather data and alters fog flow to suit wind speeds, dew point, temperature, and humidity.”

Read about the dramatic origins of the sponsoring conservancy at the Boston Globe, here. The Emerald Necklace was the work of landscape visionary Frederick Law Olmsted, who also created designs for New York’s Central Park, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and more.

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Drip Irrigation Fights Tanzanian Drought

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

According to a feature provided by the Christian Science Monitor, drip-irrigation systems are becoming a boon to regions suffering from persistent drought.

Kizito Makoye writes for Reuters, “Peter Chuwa has long flooded his paddy field using a canal that draws water from the river. These days, however, water is scarcer and growing rice this way is proving hard to sustain. A period of drought set in two years ago, and the abundant water that once helped suppress weeds in his fields and assure him of a crop regardless of rainfall has disappeared, hurting his harvests and his income. …

“Now, however, a drip irrigation system, introduced to help his village deal with worsening drought, is restoring his harvests, building his resilience to erratic weather, and saving time, he says.

” ‘You simply open the tap and leave the kit to supply water to the roots, unlike the traditional system, which takes a lot of time and energy,’ he said.

“Under pressure from drought, the 65-year-old farmer at Kikavu Chini village in Hai district in Tanzania’s northern Kilimanjaro region has switched to crops that need less water, including vegetables, maize, potatoes, and beans. A drip irrigation system, which uses far less water, supplies plenty to grow those crops, he says. …”

Nguluma Mbaga, a Kikavu Chini agricultural field officer, says the technology has come at the right time as farmers try to find ways to cope with worsening drought and other effects of climate change.

” ‘I believe farmers will be in a better position to cope with the changing weather patterns. This village is located in a dry area that does not get adequate rains, so farmers must try to use water wisely,’ he says.”

More here.

Photo: Mariana Bazo/Reuters/File
A farmer cleans prickly pear cacti irrigated with water collected by nets that trap moisture from fog on a hillside in Lima, Peru.

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Using Fog to Irrigate an Arid Land

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2014| 2 Comments »

If you want to convert the moisture in clouds into water to feed a parched land, you could train to be a sorcerer.

Alternatively, you could go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Beth Buczynski at MIT’s inhabitat.com has the story on the “giant nets that trap moisture in the foggy mist, and funnel all of the tiny droplets into a container where they add up to water we can drink.”

According to “findings published online in the journal Langmuir, most existing fog harvesting systems are far from optimized. … Postdoc Kyoo-Chul Park PhD, MIT alumnus Shreerang Chhatre PhD, graduate student Siddarth Srinivasan, chemical engineering professor Robert Cohen, and mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley, believe that by closing the gaps in the net material, they can drastically improve the efficiency of fog harvesting systems.”

A press release from the research team says, “Chilean investigators have estimated that if just 4 percent of the water contained in the fog could be captured, that would be sufficient to meet all of the water needs of that nation’s four northernmost regions, encompassing the entire Atacama Desert area.”

Photo: Shutterstock

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