The holiday season has come and gone. The ball in Time Square has signaled the start of a New Year. Here along the river in early January we often expect to be shoveling snow and scraping windshields. But Mother Nature has given us a bit of spring in our outside temperatures this past week.

In our yards night crawlers came out in the darkness to enjoy a brief bit of warm weather and get a head on the mating season. After all, who doesn’t like getting ahead on the mating season? Woods frogs could be heard singing from the nearby wood lands, “asking is spring here already?”

The Ohio River temperature was near 40 degrees. The overnight air temperatures was near sixty degrees. The two drastic differences cause the air near the surface to condense its moisture causing a dense blanket of fog. So dense was the fog on the river, tugs tied off and waited for it to lift before proceeding down River last Wednesday. It gave the impression of an old 50s movie waiting for a creature to rise out of the fog.

IN the picture if you look close, you can see the top of the Hannibal Locks and Dam barely above the fogs surface. And unusual and beautifully quiet moment in nature along the river.