Also from Astronomy Picture of the Day, a crazy lenticular cloud over New Zealand. Lovely.
What's happening above those mountains? Several clouds are stacked up into one striking lenticular cloud. Normally, air moves much more horizontally than it does vertically. Sometimes, however, such as when wind comes off of a mountain or a hill, relatively strong vertical oscillations take place as the air stabilizes. The dry air at the top of an oscillation may be quite stratified in moisture content, and hence forms clouds at each layer where the air saturates with moisture. The result can be a lenticular cloud with a strongly layered appearance. The above picture was taken in 2002 looking southwest over the Tararua Range mountains from North Island, New Zealand.
Photograph by Chris Picking. Click on either the link, or the photo and see the full size - it's worth it.
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3 comments:
Wow!
How is it that such a small country can have so many "wow" places? I gotta get there one day.
A couple of Kiwis on a wooden boat forum I used to frequent would post pics of their boat trips to distant parts of NZ, or even just racing pics. Always "Wow"-worthy.
I've never seen anything like that. It's gorgeous!
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