Clouds swirl around the Canary Islands

Clouds swirl around the Canary Islands. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features unique  cloud patterns, known as von Kármán vortices, off the west coast of Africa.

According to NASA, the vortices can develop almost anywhere that fluid flow is disturbed by a solid object. 

In this photo, winds blowing across the ocean are disturbed by the Canary Islands, a chain of volcanic islands. The air mass is blowing around the mountains to create unique swirling patterns.

The image was captured on July 9, 2020 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

The Canary Islands : Islas Canarias, pronounced [ˈislas kaˈnaɾjas]), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish archipelago and the southernmost autonomous community of Spain located in the Atlantic Ocean, in a region known as Macaronesia, 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Morocco at the closest point.

The Canary Islands are geographically located in the African Tectonic Plate, even though the archipielago is economically and politically European, as it is part of the European Union

In ancient times, the island chain was often referred to as “the Fortunate Isles”.The Canary Islands are the most southerly region of Spain and the largest and most populated archipelago of Macaronesia. Historically, the Canary Islands have been considered a bridge between four.

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory