These clouds are weird. Usually, clouds look like fluffy puffs or big, mean anvils. But these clouds… these clouds look like stripes. These clouds are weird.
Image: Instagram/Ilya Katsman
Virgin Australia shared a picture of these weird clouds yesterday on their Facebook page after Instagrammer Ilya Katsman noticed that the clouds were weird. “These clouds are weird,” he probably thought. Here is another picture of these weird clouds.
Image: Facebook/Virgin Australia
“That is striking,” said Rodney Kubesh, professor of atmospheric and hydrologic sciences at St Cloud State University, a school I called specifically because it had the word “cloud” in its name. “There’s some kind of wave phenomenon there,” he said. “What we’re looking at is some kind of wave disturbance in the atmosphere. The crest of the wave is what’s producing the cloud, and to get clouds you need to have air moving upward.”
Basically, Kubesh thought these clouds were weird.
“As far as what’s producing the disturbance, a lot of things can cause that. it could be a thunderstorm in the distance, a wind sheer, changing wind direction or wind speed or both as you go up in the atmosphere, maybe even the topography,” he said. “But I would need some more information about where and when this is.”
Wow. What weird clouds.