Photo shared by Amy Christie hunter, is really amazing. Clouds over the mountains, Smith mountain has created an almost perfect picture of the waves with fancy crests, reminiscent of the canvases of the old Japanese painters or paintings by van Gogh.
The majority of those who saw the photo, recognized that they had never seen anything like it.
This cloud tsunami is a rare natural phenomenon that scientists call Kelvin waves of Gelmgoltsa. Usually they are formed during windy days, due to the difference of the velocities at the interface of two media. The same principle underlies the formation of waves at the boundary of air and water. If the air has a different density and the top layer moves faster, the clouds curled in such a picturesque ridges.
The natural phenomenon was named in honor of scientists who have studied the physics of atmospheric phenomena. Clouds Kelvin-Hemholtz — a sign of atmospheric instability, so the aircraft in such field encountered turbulence.
The earth is not the only planet where you can observe the cloud tsunami. In the atmosphere of Saturn and Jupiter, too, is the instability of Kelvin-Hemholtz.
