"Morning Glory" clouds defy explanation-spectacular photo!

[LunaSea]

These long, crazy-looking clouds can grow to be 600 miles long and can move at up to 35 miles per hour, causing problems for aircraft even on windless days.

Known as Morning Glory clouds, they appear every fall over Burketown, Queensland, Australia, a remote town with fewer than 200 residents. A small number of pilots and tourists travel there each year in hopes of “cloud surfing” with the mysterious phenomenon.

Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe. But nobody has yet figured out what causes the Morning Glory clouds.

This shot was captured by photographer Mick Petroff from his plane near Australia’s Gulf of Carpenteria.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/morninggloryclouds/

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

1. Chem Trails!!!1!1 RUN! (n/t)

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. Chem trails left by rutting wallabees!1!1!1! nt

[Ter]

18. That's exactly what it is

But who ordered it is the mystery...

[quiet.american]

2. That is amazing-looking. nt

[femmocrat]

3. Amazing!

Thanks for posting.

[JuniperLea]

4. Weird! Got link? eom

[bbinacan]

7. Here you go

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

[guyton]

14. yesterdays pix of the day now

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090824.html

[LunaSea]

8. Link added

(oops)

[catbyte]

5. cool beans! n/t

[MineralMan]

6. Too cool! I love this planet!

[Dogmudgeon]

10. And even more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Glory_cloud">Morning Glory Cloud at Wikipedia (with lots of links).

--d!

[C_U_L8R]

11. Totally Tubular !!!

thanks : - )))

[redqueen]

12. I wonder if I've seen those before...

I've seen some clouds like that a few times now, little rows of them. I always try to get a picture.

Always love seeing them... so neat. :)

[Occulus]

15. *These* roll clouds are different

They're huge. I think YouTube has a couple videos, but they're really very very large, and they spin in the air, against the direction they're moving. IOW, they roll backward, but move forward.

Very strange, and beautiful. Hello, new desktop background.

[Igel]

16. Saw a roll cloud just north of Houston on Friday.

It wasn't like these.

(Didn't know what the cloud was, but it was novel and stood out rather nicely. Now I have a name for it.)

[BadgerKid]

13. All hail fluid dynamics! n/t

[scubadude]

17. Defy explanation? Hardly...

Gee, let's see. A mass of air moving uniformly, hrough which airplanes move...

Seems pretty simple to me.

The planes move over the same path over land, but the air moves... Wowee! Gee, if the air is moving at a uniform rate with the planes moving over it at uniform time intervals the "clouds" would be uniformly spaced... Cool.....

Chem trails... Schmemm trails... LOL

Scuba