von Kármán vortex street: Cloud vortices captured on WeatherRadar

The WeatherRadar captured the formation of a von Kármán vortex street near Madeira, which was also snapped from satellites above.

Von Kármán vortices form when air masses have to flow around towering obstacles, such as the island of Madeira recently.

In the process, the air swirls downstream of the islands and forms counter-rotating vortices at the edges of the wind shadow zones created by the mountains.

These disturbances of the air currents are also transferred to the clouds, where they become visible as vortex structures.