Once, on a morning fishing trip to a local reservoir, I witnessed small water vapor vortexes dancing about on the surface of the lake. It looked like 100's of semitransparent waterspouts ranging in size from a few inches tall to about 6 feet. As our boat passed thru them, they felt like small blasts of warm steam on our faces. This was perhaps 15 years ago and I have ever since tried to discover what this phenomenon is called. I can't find it anywhere. The closest thing I've found is a low lying fog over water called "sea smoke" but I don't think this usually involves vortexes. Could I have seen sea smoke caught in a slight wind shear or temp inversion? I have also seen references to a little known phenomenon called "pools devils". Occasionally you'll see infinitesimal points followed by tiny wakes whipping across the surface of a pool on a warm day. These are created by an indent on the surface water by  micro "tornados", for lack of a better word. Does anyone know about these things?
208055
Yes, I live in Scotland and see them in lochs, rivers and streams every day....we call them "Eddies".\n\nThey arise from differences in air pressure and water temperature.
430254
A cloud is a visible mass of condensed droplets or frozen crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. The branch of meteorology in which clouds are studied is nephology.\n\nOn Earth, the condensing substance is water vapor, which forms small droplets of water or ice crystals, typically 0.01 mm in diameter. When surrounded with billions of other droplets or crystals, they are visible as clouds. Dense deep clouds exhibit a high reflectance (70% to 95%) throughout the visible range of wavelengths: they thus appear white, at least from the top. Cloud droplets tend to scatter light very efficiently, so that the intensity of the solar radiation decreases with depth into the cloud, hence the grey or even sometimes dark appearance of the clouds at their base. Thin clouds may appear to have acquired the color of their environment or background, and clouds illuminated by non-white light, such as during sunrise or sunset, may be colored accordingly. In the near-infrared range, however, clouds would appear very dark because the water that constitutes the cloud droplets strongly absorbs solar radiation at these wavelengths.\n\nCloud formation and properties\nClouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. This can happen in three ways:\n\n1. The air is cooled below its saturation point. This happens when the air comes in contact with a cold surface or a surface that is cooling by radiation, or the air is cooled by adiabatic expansion (rising). This can happen:\n* along warm and cold fronts (frontal lift)\n* where air flows up the side of a mountain and cools as it rises higher into the atmosphere (orographic lift)\n* by the convection caused by the warming of a surface by insolation (diurnal heating)\n* when warm air blows over a colder surface such as a cool body of water.\n\n2. Clouds can be formed when two air masses below saturation point mix. Examples are breath on a cold day, aircraft contrails and Arctic sea smoke.\n\n3. The air stays the same temperature but absorbs more water vapor into it until it reaches saturation point.\n\nThe water in a typical cloud can have a mass of up to several million tonnes. However, the volume of a cloud is correspondingly high, and the net density of the relatively warm air holding the droplets is low enough that air currents below and within the cloud are capable of keeping it suspended. As well, conditions inside a cloud are not static: water droplets are constantly forming and re-evaporating. A typical cloud droplet has a radius on the order of 1 x 10-5 m and a terminal velocity of about 1-2 cm/s. This gives these droplets plenty of time to re-evaporate as they fall into the warmer air beneath the cloud.\nCumulonimbus cloud\nEnlarge\nCumulonimbus cloud\n\nMost water droplets are formed when water vapor condenses around a condensation nucleus, a tiny particle of smoke, dust, ash, or salt. In supersaturated conditions, water droplets may act as condensation nuclei.\n\nWater droplets large enough to fall to the ground are produced in two ways. The most important means is through the Bergeron Process, theorized by Tor Bergeron, in which supercooled water droplets and ice crystals in a cloud interact to produce the rapid growth of ice crystals; these crystals precipitate from the cloud and melt as they fall. This process typically takes place in clouds with tops cooler than -15°C. The second most important process is the collision and wake capture process, occurring in clouds with warmer tops, in which the collision of rising and falling water droplets produces larger and larger droplets, which are eventually heavy enough to overcome air currents in the cloud and the updraft beneath it and fall as rain. As a droplet falls through the smaller droplets which surround it, it produces a "wake" which draws some of the smaller droplets into collisions, perpetuating the process. This meth
402235
Could be a strange mirage. Sometimes weird mirage can project skyline of cities beyond horizon or just strange shapes in sky when atmosphere refract lights in unusual ways.
141562
It's not smoke, (well, sometimes it is).  The super-heated exhaust from the jet engine vaporizes water molecules in the higher atmosphere and converts it basically to steam. After a few minutes is cools down and disappears. Depending on the temperature and humidity level up high, the vapor trails will be short or long and either last or vanish quickly.
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Various explanations for the apparent high number of dissapperances have been put forward, ranging from the mundane to the hyper-fantastic.\n\nSkeptics contend that this region has a comparable rate of maritime and aerial incidents as any other similar sized region of the ocean. They point out that Lloyd's of London, a world-reknowned insurer of maritime vessels, does not charge a higher insurance premium for ships that regularly traverse the triangle.\n\nScientific considerations for an increased dissaperance rate take into acount that this region experiences severe tropical storms and is the source of many hurricanes. These storms create an increased danger to both ship and air traffic.\n\nRougue waves have also been put forward as a possible cause. These rare waves can reach heights of as much as 100 feet (30 meters), easily swamping most ships. Rouge waves, however, would have no effect on air travel.\n\nA third scientific explanation is methane hydrates. Methane deposits on the ocean floor may release bursts of methane gas that reduces the density of the water it permeates. Since ships rely on displacement to stay afloat, a reduction of density in the water would cause a ship to immediately sink. As the methane leaves the water and rises into the air, it would reduce the density of the air as well, thus reducing lift on aircraft, causing them to descend rapidly. In addition, the methane would change the air mixture taken into the engines of the aircraft, causing the engine to stall. While these events have not been witnessed in nature, they have been proven in lab experiments.\n\nMore exotic explanations for the Bermuda Triangle include it being an area of magnetic disturbance, temporal (or time) holes, the location of the lost city of Atlantis, or extra-terrestrial abduction.
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It is not air that takes a spherical shape in water but rather the water forces it to take that shape. This is because of surface tension - the same reason why drops of water tend to be shperical. It is the state with least potential energy implying the most stable state.\nIn case of smoke in air, the same thing does not happen as neither air nor smoke does not have any surface tension (being gases, rather mixtures of gases, they are not cohesive unlike water or any liquid for that matter). The simply diffuse into each other randomly (and aided by air currents) however, smoke being a hot mixture of gases, tends to rise higher, hence the wierd upgoing patterns formed by smoke.
631973
One famous water form is called the sea I think. Nobody's ever seen it though
296445
It is called a contrail,  condensation trail or vapour trail.\n\nCombustion of airplane fuel generates steam in the exhaust. At high altitudes the cold temperature of the atmosphere causes the steam to condense into water droplet or ice crystals (depending on the temperature). \n\nThe condensed water droplets / ice crystals disperse light, making them visible.
36793
You can see clouds because clouds aren't gases.  They're condensed water droplets and ice crystals that aren't big enough to fall to the ground.  If clouds were actually made of water vapor, you couldn't see them.  Steam isn't completely gaseous, which is why you can still see it.  Smoke is visible because it's not a gas either, it's a colloid; it's a solution of solid particles in air.
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No, never. These are completely unrelated weather events. The spinning of a waterspout is caused by the close interaction of winds tavelling in different directions and/or at different speeds. It occurs on a very localised scale.\n\nThe spinning of a hurricane is caused by the coriolis forces actin on the air moving into a zone of low pressure. It occurs over a massive scale, sevaral hundred square miles commonly. \n\nThere is simply no way of converting one event into the other. It's like asking if a lightning bug can sometimnes becomes an atomic bomb because they both produce light. The differences are really that great.
204401
Tough question!  I really only have a hypothesis, so I'm not sure if this will help.\n\nSmell is triggered by suspended particles in a fluid (air or liquid are both, technically, fluids).  The higher the concentration, the higher the strength of the olfactory stimulation.  As per basic physics, temperature is a measure of the activity of the particles.  So in terms of the particle activity, warm water is moving faster, meaning the scent particles are being diffused away fast, making it more difficult to track them back to their source.  So my guess, based on this theory, is that cold water would leave a shorter but more intact scent trail back to the source.
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At dusk, the land has begun to cool but the ocean, being water, retains heat longer than the land does.  The temperature differential causes a wind to blow out toward the ocean due to the rising warm air over the ocean.  This wind blows the clouds out into their thin and whispy shape.
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A blue flame with the bunsen air hole completely open is called a roaring flame. This flame shows a small purplish come inside the blue outer flame. The top of this cone is the hottest spot in the flame.\n\nsee pic \nhttp://www.blcleathertech.com/default.asp?id=99
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The best way to view them is on video.\nA waterspout that makes landfall takes on a new name then... tornado.  The water that has been sucked-up into the funnel becomes very unstable at landfall and goes everywhere.  The wind does even more damage.\nSo for that reason, treat a waterspout the same as you would any tornado.
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That's a real tough question to answer.\n\nHurricanes don't just result from warm water. If they did we would expect to see more hurricanes in tropical regions than we do. It's fairly complex, but to form hurricanes basically need warm water under a stable, cold, upper level air mass to produce the low pressure bubble. Cyclones and hurricanes only form in a few regions around the world called 'cyclone basins' because only a few regions have those exact conditions. Because the conditions for hurricane formation are so specific it's really hard to predict the effects of climate change.\n\nWarmer oceans should increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. Howevere the atmosphere and oceans probably don't warm at the same rate. The atmopshere ATM seems to be warming much faster than the oceans. That might mean that the cold summer air masses needed for hurricane formation will become much rarer, and as a result hurricanes may become far less freqeunt. \n\nAlternatively the cyclone basins may just move. With moderately warmer oceans and a much warmer atmopshere the basins might well move to higher latitudes to where the air is colder. That would be far more catastrophic than a simple increase in frequency. Places that are historically hurricane prone have learned to build to cope with them. If the basins move hurricanes will start stiking places that are not deisgned to withstand them. Can you imagine the effect of a hurricane on New York City or London?\n\nThen we get to throw in other complicating factors like the changes in ocean currents and atmopspheric systems brought about by warming. Weather is the ultimate choatic system, there are a huge number of interscting variables. That makes it just about imposisble to predict 3 months in advance under stable conditions. Trying to predict what will happen 30 years down the track under changing condition is laughable.\n\nAt the moment there is just to much we don't know about how hurricanes form and what the effects of global warming will be. The majority opinion is we'll see more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, but there is a large minority plumping for movement inthe cyclone basins and a small minoirty predicting decreased frequency.\n_________________\n\n>>>>watch the movie "The day after tomorrow". good movie,\n>>>> and accurate prediction of what could happen if global \n>>>> warming continues.\n\nPMSL. \n\nYeah, and after that watch "Godzilla" for an accurate prediction of what happens following an atomic test.
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The size of the water particles in mist is widely variable.  Some particles are smaller than one microm while other can exceed 100 microns.\n\nIn steam (water vapor) the water exists as individual atoms, which are much smaller than the particles in mist.\n\nMist is of a lower temperature than steam.  The kinetic energy in steam is very much higher than that of water mist.
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It sighs, moans and howls. It can sweep us off our feet or leave us burned. We share a tempestuous relationship with one of the most powerful forces of nature - wind - but where does wind actually come from?\nIt all starts with the sun.\n\nIt all starts with the sun, says Professor Kimberly Strong, an expert in atmospheric physics at U of T. Solar radiation emitted by the sun travels through space and strikes the Earth, causing regions of unequal heating over land masses and oceans. This unequal heating produces regions of high and low pressure. "The atmosphere tries to equalize those pressures, so you get movement of air from a region of high pressure to a region of low pressure," says Strong. Scientists call this the pressure gradient force, and it is the fundamental force behind wind.\nKimberly Strong\nKimberly Strong\n(Image: Jewel Randolph)\n\nEarth's rotation adds a twist to the story. While wind would normally move in a straight line, the spinning of the planet beneath makes the wind appear to follow a curved path. This is known as the Coriolis effect, which deflects winds to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. There is no Coriolis effect at the equator.\n\nThe faster the wind blows, the more it is deflected by the spinning of the Earth. Wind speeds increase higher up in the atmosphere, away from the frictional effects of the Earth's surface. The most extreme examples are the jet streams, which separate cold polar air from warmer subtropical air. Located about nine kilometres above the surface of the Earth, this fast-flowing air moves from west to east over the mid-latitudes and, at 240 km/h, boasts some of the world's fastest wind speeds.\n\nCloser to ground level, local land formations such as mountains and the proximity to water can affect wind patterns. Near the ocean, the unequal heating of land and water can generate so-called "land breezes" and "sea breezes". During the day, the air temperature above the land increases more quickly than that over the water while cooler, higher pressure air from over the water forces its way inland, creating a sea breeze.\nWinds are intimately tied to our weather.\n\n"At night, the reverse happens," says Strong. "The land cools more quickly, while over the ocean, it's a bit warmer," creating a high pressure mass of air over the land that then blows offshore. "Winds are intimately tied to our weather," says Strong. High pressure systems tend to bring clear skies, while low pressure systems, characterized by rising air, cloud formation and rainfall, are linked to bad weather.\n\nHurricanes are regions of extreme low pressure that have managed to build up high levels of energy. As water vapour condenses from warm, humid air to form clouds, it releases a huge amount of energy. That heat further warms the air, creating a positive feedback loop and reducing the air pressure at the surface. Air rushes in from regions of high pressure towards that region, and the combination of the pressure gradient force and the Coriolis effect starts the hurricane's familiar spinning motion. Winds inside a hurricane can reach over 300 km/h at the wall of the hurricane's "eye", near the surface of the water.\n\nTornadoes, unlike hurricanes, are localized storms that form over land. "They're violent wind storms involving a rotating column of air extending down from a cumulonimbus cloud," says Strong. "The pressure inside is about ten per cent lower than the air on the outside, so the air near the ground tends to rush into the tornado. The air streaming inwards moves upwards as well, until it merges into the air inside the cloud. You can get winds in tornadoes of 480 to 500 km/h."\nMantra project\nA balloon launch for the MANTRA project\n(Image: K. Strong)\n\nBut those are gentle breezes compared to the gales found on our planetary neighbours. Ju