Long-distance wave watching during sunset
Have you ever noticed how much you can observe when you look at water from a distance? For example in these pictures, you see the tracks of ships that are long out of sight! Do you see the circle that one obviously drove before leaving our field of view?
For the ships far out in the fjord, you can’t actually see the waves so much as the turbulence they created that left the surface smoother, thus better reflecting the light from the low sun (and appearing yellow-ish). And how cool how you see how newer tracks run over older ones! Only for the ferry in the bottom left you can actually see the waves themselves.
In the picture below we actually see the waves that both ferries made.
Zooming in: How cool does it look to have these waves almost all the way across the water? And do you see how they are bound by the ship’s V-shaped, feathery wake? I find it really fascinating that there are such large surface elevations, but only inside of the ship’s wake.
I just love wave watching, even when I am not even that close to the water :-)
Joe Buchanan says:
I have often looked at an area of ocean and wondered about all the different textures and patterns. But why does turbulence leave a smoother surface? I can imagine that upwelling basically washes away the surface chop, but why does smoothness apparently persist for so long? I would have thought that it would vanish at the speed of surface waves encroaching on the smooth areas – but these wake traces look as if they persist much longer.