By Jennifer Gray
2 hours ago
With the most recent Santa Ana wind event in Southern California this week, the mention of mountain waves was used as a potential impact. While mountain waves impact a very narrow area, they can be incredibly dangerous and even life threatening.
In many ways, the atmosphere acts similarly to water. Imagine a river flowing. If the water runs over a large rock sitting at the bottom of the riverbed, it will generate wave-like ripples downstream of the rock. The similar setup takes place in our atmosphere. If very strong winds are running perpendicular to a mountain range, it will generate waves of very strong winds on the leeside of the mountains.
It’s not unheard of for this narrow swath of strong winds to get up to 100 mph. It can result in power outages, downed trees and even structural damage to homes and businesses.
Lenticular clouds are round, disk-shaped clouds that will form over mountains many times when gravity waves are present.
It’s also common for these mountain waves to cause lenticular clouds to form over the mountain peaks, which resemble disks sitting atop the mountains. Mountain waves can also lead to extreme turbulence, making for rough conditions in the skies.
This segment originally appeared in today’s edition of the Morning Brief newsletter. Sign up here to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.
Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world’s biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.
