A series of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves can be seen in the high clouds—ragged, but obvious, the biggest of them seen “atop” a single breaking wave on the nearer, lower chunk of fractus (scud). Kelvin-Helmholtz waves develop from shearing instabilities, when adjoining layers of air of different densities move at different rates of speed. Much of the time, such waves are invisible, with no condensation to reveal their presence. What made this shot for me was:
- 1. The purely fortunate visual alignment of the biggest waves on greatly disparate types of clouds in two different parts of the atmosphere, and
- 2. The fact that I happened to glance to the sky while walking that direction down a trail festooned with terrestrial photographic diversions, such as water birds, alligators and wildflowers.