What do these clouds look like? The wakes of torpedoes streaming through clear water? The burrows of space whales? It’s a bizarre sight. If you want to witness it in person, you’ll have to visit the Gulf of Carpentaria on the northern coast of Australia because that’s the only spot in the world where Morning Glory clouds consistently appear. NASA explains how they form:
Long, horizontal, circulating tubes of air might form when flowing, moist, cooling air encounters an inversion layer, an atmospheric layer where air temperature atypically increases with height. These tubes and surrounding air could cause dangerous turbulence for airplanes when clear. Morning Glory clouds can reportedly achieve an airspeed of 60 kilometers per hour over a surface with little discernible wind.
Morning Glory clouds are 1 of 23 bizarre but completely real meteorological phenomenon rounded up by When on Earth.