Tag Archives: wake

Wake Patterns in Clouds Over Edwards

During the air show at Edwards AFB, there was a lot of maneuvering of aircraft high above the crowds.  There was a little cloud at higher levels – not enough to stop it being almost uncomfortably hot, but enough to be visible – and the planes that flew through this level left their wakes through the cloud layers breaking them up and forming patterns where they had been.  I thought this looked really cool and, because the show was backlit, the sun was coming through these patterns and the shadows made them appear more conspicuous.  A C-17 flew across at one point which gives you some idea of the scale of these interesting patterns in the sky.

Big Container Ship Making Waves

Tacoma is one of the largest container ports on the west coast.  It gets a lot of big container ship traffic and, at some point, I intend to explore the port a little more to see if there are any interesting photo opportunities.  While waiting around at Ruston, I saw a large ship heading down the sound towards the harbor.  It seemed to be making good speed considering how close it was to its destination.  They say it takes a long time to stop big ships but I guess they still had a decent distance to go and plenty of time to slow down.  As it headed towards me, I was taken by the wake it was creating as it plowed forward.  It turned to enter the harbor so I got a last look at it as it disappeared behind the marina wall.

Swirling Wakes of Silt

San Francisco Bay has some strong tidal flows and crossing the bay is the San Mateo Bridge.  It has to resist these regular flows which it does without any problem.  There is a lot of silt in the bay and, as the tide is changing, this silt can get churned up, particularly by the turbulence around the piles for the bridge.  As we flew down the final approach, I was able to get some shots of the aby that included the bridge and showed clearly the turbulence behind each bridge pile courtesy of the silt.  This is something that an aerial view will give you that you would no notice as you drove over the bridge.