A lone cloud resembling an ocean wave was spotted in the clear winter sky in New Hampshire Monday morning.
The Mount Washington Observatory, a non-profit organization that maintains a research facility on top of the New Hampshire peak, tweeted the photo this morning. They said, "Mother Nature waved back!", and explained how these clouds form.
For the meteorologists in the room, these are known as "Kelvin-Helmholtz Clouds". But what causes them to look the way that they do? It all has to do with the way that the air is flowing through the atmosphere that day.
There's a reason they look like breaking waves in the ocean. After wind blows up and over a barrier, like a mountain, the air continues flowing through the atmosphere in a wavelike pattern. This swirling, turbulent air flow can give the clouds the appearance you see in the picture. When there are two layers of air moving at different speeds you can occasionally get clouds that look like this.
Back in 2019, a photo from Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia also showed this phenomenon, going viral in the process. In this case there were several wave-like features lined up in a row.
You can learn more about these clouds below:
