Striped clouds appear to converge over a mountaintop in this photo, but that’s an illusion. In reality, these clouds are parallel and periodic; it’s only the camera’s wide-angle lens that Keep reading
Tag: condensation
Lenticular Landscape
Mountain ridgelines push oncoming winds up and over their peaks, creating the conditions for some spectacular condensation. If the displaced air is moist enough, it cools and condenses into a Keep reading
Serpents and Ouroboros
Beads of condensation on a cooling, oil-slicked surface have a dance all their own in this video. Large droplets gobble up their fellows as they follow serpentine paths; each new Keep reading
Spreading Frost
Condensation forms beads of water on a surface. When suddenly cooled, those drops begin to freeze into frost. This video looks at the process in optical and in infrared, revealing Keep reading
Fog in the Blue Ridge Mountains
Fog blankets the forest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in this photo by Tihomir Trichkov. It gives the photo the quality of an Impressionist painting. Rain from the day before Keep reading
Ominous Mammatus
Mammatus clouds are fairly unusual and often look quite dramatic. Most clouds have flat bottoms, caused by the specific height and temperature at which their droplets condense. But mammatus clouds Keep reading
Inhibiting Marine Lightning
Thunderstorms over the ocean have substantially less lightning than a similar storm over land. Scientists wondered whether this difference could be due to lower cloud bases over the ocean or Keep reading
Bendable Ice
Ice — as we typically encounter it — is extremely brittle and easily broken. That’s due to defects in the ice, places where atoms have settled into a spot that Keep reading
Cloud-Making Waves
As sea ice disappears in the Arctic Ocean, it leaves behind higher waves on the open water. These large waves help inject sea salt and organic matter into the atmosphere, Keep reading
Bullseye
The Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands began erupting in mid-September 2021. This satellite image, captured October 1st, shows a peculiar bullseye-like cloud over the volcano. Hot water vapor Keep reading