July 26, 2019 - Cloud Vortices off Canary Islands

A cloud-filled sky, rugged islands, and turbulent air joined to create fanciful designs in the atmosphere in late July 2019. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of cloud vortices off of the Canary Islands on July 22.

These particular type of swirling patterns are known as von Kármán vortices. Named after Theodore von Kármán, the Hungarian-American physicist who was the first to describe the physical processes that create the long chains of spiral eddies, these shapes can form nearly anywhere that the flow of fluid or air is disturbed by a stationary object. In this case, driving wind rushes past the tall peaks on the rugged Canary Islands. As the winds are diverted around the high areas, turbulence is created and the disturbance in the flow continues downstream in the form of rows of vortices that alternate their direction of rotation.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 7/22/2019
Resolutions: 1km (793.7 KB), 500m (2.1 MB), 250m (3.8 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC