Saturday, August 16, 2014

Clouds on the Wing



This was a flight out of Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport on the morning of Saturday, August 9th.  I watched arriving planes coming out of the clouds and it looked like their wings were on fire, completely covered in smoke. That of course, was not the case. The planes were making clouds. When my flight took off I started recording with my iphone and it started just before I hit record.  Watch the wing carefully you can’t see the entire wing until after the cloud clears as the plane passes through the low cloud layer. 

 



Basically what is happening here is the water vapor in the very humid air condenses because as the air speeds up over the top part of the wing it leads to lower pressure and thus cooler air. The air is cooled enough to reach the dew point forming a cloud.




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