It commemorates the “Great Wave off Kanagawa”, the famous work of art by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. As in the woodcut image, huge waves pile up one after the other in Rachel Gordon’s photos and seem to want to swallow up the whole world. With one difference: in Rachel Gordon’s photos, the waves are not made of liquid water, but of clouds.
Even if the photos look too bizarre to be true at first glance, they are actually real. Speaking to the BBC about capturing the photos of the clouds over the crest of the Bighorn Mountains from the town of Sheridan, Gordon tells the BBC: “It was something special and I knew right away I had to capture it.”
Weather expert Matt Taylor from the BBC provides an explanation for the unusual cloud formation: Wave-like clouds are known, as in this case, as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. They are created when a faster stream of air moves over the rising air on the ground.
Despite this scientific explanation, Taylor is also thrilled with the photos, calling them “one of the most stunning and epic examples of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds” he has ever seen. He believes part of the beauty of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds is that they show the fluid state of the atmosphere.
These recordings are not only a special event for meteorologists, which one likes to look at in amazement. This is also proven by Rachel Gordon’s post on Facebook, which has now been liked several thousand times.
Sources: Facebook, BBC
