Hang gliders

If you didn't know what a moonbow is, I'm sure you'll get it just at the moment you'll see the picture sent to us by Windy user, captain Serge Prakhov (Thank you, captain Prakhov!).

A moonbow (also known as a lunar rainbow or white rainbow) is a rainbow produced by moonlight rather than sunlight.

A moonbow often appears to be white because the light is usually too faint to excite our cone color receptors. Still, you can capture the colors in a moonbow on a film or digital camera set to a longer exposure.

Same as a solar rainbow, moonbow's formation is caused by the refraction of light in water droplets and it is always positioned in the opposite part of the sky from the moon relative to the observer.

This weather phenomenon is known at least since Aristotle's Meteorology circa 350 BCE.

Moonbow at Pacific Ocean, 10 May 2017, Serge Prakhov

A spiraling cloud pattern, known as a von Kármán vortex, formed off the west coast of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula on May 13, 2019. The atmospheric phenomenon seen here by NOAA-20 was named after Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American aerospace engineer who co-founded NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Von Kármán vortices typically form when the prevailing wind is diverted by elevated land features such as islands, mountaintops or volcanoes. These topographic features disrupt the flow of the air, and the result is beautiful spiral patterns in the clouds. In this case, the von Kármán vortices formed off the southeast coast of Guadalupe Island, which is located about 150 miles off the west coast of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula.

This image was created by combining three of the high resolution thermal and visible channels from the NOAA-20 satellite's VIIRS sensor. The combination of these channels enhances the contrast between clouds, water, and land surfaces, with the ocean appearing black in this imagery.

Credits: NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory

Robert Rohde, who is a Lead Scientist at Berkeley Earth, shared interesting thread on his Twitter account.
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Rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic are causing declines in sea ice,with larger percentage declines in the annual minima than the maxima.

Comparison of Arctic sea ice distributions on September 21 in 1979 and 2018, near the time of the annual minimum.

The minimum sea ice extent was ~1/3 lower in 2018.

Recently, sea ice reductions have allowed brief periods of navigable open water each year.

Comparison of Arctic sea ice distributions on March 13 in 1979 and 2019, near the time of the annual maximum. The maximum sea ice extent was 10% lower in 2019.

The annual average temperature in the Arctic Ocean has risen about 3 C (5.4 F) since the 1970s.

Arctic warming is driven by the buildup of greenhouse gases, but it has also been amplified by the loss of sea ice, which allows more sunlight to be absorbed in the Arctic Ocean.

Tornado near Călărași, Romania

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A giant two-tone tornado has swept over Romania. Tornado forced a bus off the road and overturned it in a nearby field. Twelve people on the bus were injured, one passenger was treated for severe trauma. Ten buildings lost their roofs. The tornado's speed was estimated at 90km/h (56mph).

Watch the videos brought by drivers who left their cars near Călărași to shoot that beast with their phones.

About 20 people were injured after strong thunderstorms and hail swept through the city of Wenzhou of Zhejiang Province in eastern China Wednesday, local authorities said.

Students of Wenzhou Vocational & Technical College and recruiters were hit and injured by hail, with five hurt badly.

Wild storms and heavy rain came suddenly as the college held an exhibition on the final work of its 2019 graduates for employment recommendation at 3 p.m. in a simple outdoor shed.

The injured students have received treatment and no injuries have been reported by other schools so far, said Liu Tianliang, deputy head of the local education bureau office.

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20 injured after thunderstorm, hail hit east China

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Northwesterly winds, associated with Storm Hannah hit Ireland with violent gusts of 130 to 150 km/h. The storm will bring strong winds to southern parts of the UK on Friday night into Saturday. Check out wind and gusts forecast and weather warnings for the area.

Stay safe!

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#StormHannah will bring strong winds to Ireland

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