November 30, 2012

Morning Glory Clouds over Australia


What causes these long, strange clouds? No one is sure. A rare type of cloud known as a Morning Glory cloud can stretch 1,000 kilometers long and occur at altitudes up to two kilometers high. Although similar roll clouds have been seen at specific places across the world, the ones over Burketown, Queensland Australia occur predictably every spring. Long, horizontal, circulating tubes of air might form when flowing, moist, cooling air encounters an inversion layer, an atmospheric layer where air temperature atypically increases with height. These tubes and surrounding air could cause dangerous turbulence for airplanes when clear. Morning Glory clouds can reportedly achieve an airspeed of 60 kilometers per hour over a surface with little discernible wind. On this picture, photographer Mick Petroff photographed some Morning Glory clouds from his airplane near the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia.

Image Credit & Licence: Mick Petroff; James Holmes
Explanation from: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090824.html

9 comments:

  1. they look cool wish i could see them with my two eyes that would be great

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  2. OMG XD .They look beautiful k wish k waz in da plane;-)

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  3. When these are predictable, chance for any of us to see them is pretty high!

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  4. Can meteorologists seriously have no idea about how something like this even _happens_? No wonder they're given 1/5th of the news to babble their clueless way through each night.

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  5. Nature produces some Awesome stuff!! They look so weird & unbelievable!! But there they are. Really strange.

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  6. it must be amazing to see it so close up

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