Last night we developed a very strong inversion and a shallow fog layer that has now mainly burnt off. At daybreak many land areas around the Sound had fog, while large areas of the Sound were clear.
Here is an extraordinary picture sent to me by Tracee Geernaert at a location on Salmon Bay, looking to the north. You see those wave-like structures---reminiscent of breaking waves on a beach? Stunning. Those are examples of Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (KHI) waves that are produced when there a very large change in wind with height over a layer of the atmosphere that is stable.
These are also called billow clouds. Here are a few more examples:
Such clouds can be associated with substantial turbulence as they roll up and break. Often quite turbulent to fly through. A few years ago I was sitting in a window seat on an aircraft and saw those clouds ahead of us. I told the person next to me that it would be a good idea to put on her seatbelt. She laughed at me. A few minutes later we hit moderate turbulence. She wasn't laughing anymore.
Some beautiful shots this morning of the sun and shallow fog from the Queen Anne and Space Needle cams:
Let me end with an extraordinary shot this morning of the fog from Peter Benda's house at 1100 ft in Bellevue
