We recently traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains, a mountain range rising along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. The Smoky Mountains got its name as the native Cherokee people traditionally called the mountain range Shaconage, which translates to “place of the blue smoke.”

If you want a nerdy explanation, here it is – the “smoke” is actually an optical result of a natural photochemical process. The trees, shrubs, and other plants of the dense and diverse southern Appalachian forests emit natural hydrocarbons which then react with the ozone particles. When moisture condenses on these aerosols, this scatter the light in the blue-violet spectrum producing the signature haziness.

However, when we visited the Smokies it was not smoky at all. Instead, it was snowy. Here are sample photos of the snowy Smoky Mountains.

From the Smokies,

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(*photos taken somewhere in Tennessee)