photo #9317272

As any surfer knows, it pays to get up early to catch the best waves,’ said Stephen Ingram (Cloud Appreciation Society Member 7,328), who spotted these breaking-wave curls in wildfire smoke over White Mountain Peak in Owens Valley, California, US. The atmospheric flows that cause cloud formations can sometimes also affect smoke. Here, differences in the airflow above and below the smoke have created an undulating pattern that curls over at the crests to form breaking-wave features. If this were a cloud formation, we’d classify the features as fluctus clouds. But it’s not, so we’ll simply catch the waves before they dissipate, and hope the wildfires that made the smoke caused as little destruction as possible.