Both an F-18 fighter pilot and satellites spied this cool swirling vortex of clouds off the Southern California coast

Check out this image captured Thursday by NASA’s Aqua satellite. See that swirling vortex, complete with a clear eye? It has formed just off the coast of San Clemente Island to the west of San Diego.

Here’s what it looked like to an F-18 fighter pilot flying directly over the feature:

My fighter pilot buddy, boots, took this pic out the window of his F-18 of Von Karman Vorticity creating an eddy off the coast of San Diego Feb 1st. Great shot of a cool phenomenon I’ve just learned a lot about! @NWSSanDiego can’t say I’ve seen this in Iowa before 🤔 pic.twitter.com/9jQGWlmcpa

— Megan Salois (@WXMegs) February 3, 2018

This is a classic von Kármán vortex, a cyclonic swirl of clouds that can develop when winds are diverted around a big obstacle such an island. The vortices form quite commonly off California as winds interact with coastal topography and the Channel Islands — in this case, San Clemente Island.

I’ve written about von Kármán vortices before, most recently this past July, when a batch of them developed off the Southern California coast:

Satellite imagery shows hurricane-like whirlpools swirling in the atmosphere along the California coast

Here’s a view of the entire life cycle of last week’s vortex, from the GOES-East weather satellite:

And here’s a more closeup view, also from GOES-East:

This von Kármán vorticity is literally the coolest thing I've ever seen. pic.twitter.com/b2TwzKY1Hv

— Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) February 2, 2018

When you watch these animations, I think you can get a visceral sense that the atmosphere is much like a liquid. In fact, from the perspective of physics, both the ocean and atmosphere have fluid properties. And we have a common word for the constantly changing fluid properties of the atmosphere: weather!