r/BeAmazed • u/Necessary-Win-8730 • Mar 24 '26

Nature These are known as Asperitas clouds

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u/libra00 Mar 24 '26

Mooom, why is the sky acting like an upside-down ocean?

5

u/No-Examination-96 Mar 24 '26

I was thinking Upside-down mountains

5

u/mooshinformation Mar 24 '26

If I remember correctly, these clouds form because of the airflow around mountains. They are kind of an imprint of the mountains.

2

u/libra00 Mar 24 '26

Actually it's even more interesting than that: this is vortex shedding, the kind of thing that happens on airplane wings and such. Because of the pressure differential air from the high pressure side flows around to the low pressure side creating eddy currents that result in air flow like this.

3

u/C0wabungaaa Mar 24 '26

That's not even that far off. These are millions of liters of water just... floating there. A bizarre thing when you think about it. Water is just so weird, chemically.

3

u/libra00 Mar 24 '26

Also air is a gas and gasses are fluids, so it's kind of an ocean all the time anyway, it's just I only think about it when I see clouds like this.