The National Weather Service office in Boise grabbed a slick time-lapse video of Redfish Lake, Idaho over the weekend. The three-day lapse captured by the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association web-cam shows fog dancing across the lake and a glimpse of winter.

National Weather Service meteorologist Korri Anderson put the video together at posted it at NWS Boise's Facebook page where it's been shared nearly 800 times.

NOAA meteorologist Jay Breidenbach says web-cam videos like this one help weather watchers better understand what they're seeing on radar and satellite screens.

"Our weather radar is pretty good at seeing precipitation, but it doesn't see through mountains and doesn't tell us exactly what type of precipitation might be falling," Breidenbach explains. "Much of our forecast area in Idaho is remote and sometimes there aren't any actual surface observations to tell us exactly what's happening. However, if we can see snow accumulating on a web-cam, that is what we would call 'ground truth' for our forecast."

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