Wow, it’s been over a year since my last post.  Honestly, I just haven’t seen much worth posting until today.

Here’s a pretty cool article that sheds some light on internal waves.  These are waves that can occur deep in the ocean or in the atmosphere and are often invisible to the untrained eye despite their colossal size (a single wave can span over 1,000 km).  Researchers have found that internal waves typically form when large regions of moving water (or air) encounter some sort of an obstacle, typically a mountain.

In the ocean tides can move large regions of water.  When this water encounters an underwater mountain, it causes a wave to form.  In the following photo you can see an internal wave passing through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea.

Internal waves form in the atmosphere when a large region of air is forced against a mountain.  When a plane encounters an atmospheric wave, it can gain or lose altitude very rapidly (2,000 ft in 15 seconds).  That’s pretty freaky when you consider the fact that you can’t necessarily know that you’re going to encounter an atmospheric internal wave ahead of time.  But some atmospheric waves are actually visible, like this picture of morning glory clouds.  It stands to reason that you could potentially catch one of these waves and ride it, maybe not with a surf board, but with a glider.  Because a single wave can span over 1,000 km, that would be one long ride.  Paddling back to the peak would be a drag.

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