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Giant Atmospheric Waves Filmed Over Iowa

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the surfing-the-skies dept.

NJChopperMan writes "For all those of you that thought waves only existed in the ocean, Photos and video of undular bore waves were caught in Iowa last week." The story also touches on the role of undular bores in severe weather, but it's definitely second fiddle to the video of the waves.

7 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. global warming by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Funny

    i don't know how, but somehow, this is global warmings fault.

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  2. Bore waves? by mstahl · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bore waves . . . in Iowa? *yawn* That sounds about right.

  3. Well I knew there were a lot of them in Iowa.. by bombastinator · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought undular bores are those guys at parties who tell loud political jokes then try to sell you insurance or something.

  4. on a map by Paktu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a pretty good example of what this looks like on a weather map

  5. I flew my hang glider on one. by scorpio_boy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously, go see the photos and video on my blog if you don't believe me at http://rolf.id.au/ We call the resulting visual cloud a morning glory in Australia....

  6. Storms also "breath". by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been a casual cloud/storm nerd for decades and if you watch the sky long enough you can't help but notice "waves" and "drainpipes" at a more localized scale (particularly when a strong cold front is approaching).

    I currently live a 100M or so from the beach in Melbourne Australia. Small intense storms come in over the bay heading directly toward the beach so you get the front "ledge" of the storm cloud coming over while behind you is clear and the drama is still out in the bay. If you stay still and face toward one of these storms roughly when the cloud/sky boundry is directly over the beach you will feel the wind do a 180deg flip as if the storm is enhaling warm air and exhaling cold with a slight pause in between. It is more pronounced with slow moving storms and can last for 15 minutes or so with a regular inhale/exhale cycle of about a minute. The first exhale of an intense summer storm can feel like someone opened a fridge door if you have been sitting with your back turned and not seen it approaching.

    If rain/hail is heavy enough in the center of the storm you might also see prominent ridges running up the underside of the ledge similar to those in TFA but curved to fit the squashed drainpipe shape of the storm. When the rain/hail gets closer the wind will turn steady and cold (time to go inside).

    Disclaimer: Don't try observing it standing on the beach, and escpecially not with an umbrella!

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  7. Re:Woohoo, let's go gliding! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would imagine if you could get up there you could surf them.
    There is a really interesting article about people surfing one such wave (called morning glory!) in Australia:

    http://www.williamolive.com/soliton/al-giles-original-morning-glory-article.html

    One of the images inside is particularly striking:

    http://www.williamolive.com/soliton/PK%20on%20roll%20cloud.jpg

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