Like breaking waves at the beach, these wavy clouds curl but only for a moment. The photo was captured near sunset on a late August evening in Arlington, MA. This Keep reading
Tag: wave clouds
A Year From Geostationary Orbit
Our planet is a complex fluid dynamical system, and one of the best ways to watch nature at work is through timelapse. This short film takes us through an entire Keep reading
Crisscrossing Wave Clouds
Crisscrossing lines of wave clouds mark the wake of the Sandwich Islands in this satellite image. The tallest islands in the chain thrust rocky peaks more than 1000 meters above Keep reading
Wave Clouds in the Front Range
Last Sunday night metro Denver was treated to a rare sight: clouds resembling breaking waves formed near sunset. These are Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, and the comparison to ocean waves is apt, Keep reading
Striped Clouds
Living near the Rocky Mountains, it’s not unusual to look up and find the sky striped with lines of clouds. Such wave clouds are often formed on the lee side of Keep reading
Wave Clouds
Stripe-like wave clouds can often form downstream of mountains. This satellite image shows such clouds in the South Pacific where rocky mountains jut 600 meters (2,000 ft) above the sea. Keep reading
Lincolnshire KH Clouds
These beautiful Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds were spotted over Lincolnshire on December 19th. They form between two layers of air, one of which is moving faster than the other. Although that situation Keep reading
Breaking Waves in the Sky
Under the right atmospheric conditions, clouds can form in a distinctive but short-lived breaking wave pattern known as a Kelvin-Helmholtz cloud. The animation above shows the formation and breakdown of Keep reading
Waves Over the Rockies
These spectacular wave-like clouds are the result of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. When two layers of air move past one another at different velocities, an unstable shear layer forms at their Keep reading
Wave Clouds
Coming home from APS DFD, I looked out the window as we flew east over the last of the Rockies and caught these wave clouds. Air flowing west to east Keep reading