One of them is what you learn about air and sky. The sky, really, isn't too complex but it does confuse because we don't live in it; flying helps take away some of that confusion. One unfortunate misconception is that the sky is not fluid. We tend to equate fluid with liquid, but gases move as fluid too. If you had a million small pebbles they'd also exhibit fluid flow in some capacity, but who cares really?
Because we tend to misunderstand (that sounds so wrong post-Bush) the fluid flow of the sky, I think we often miss out on some of the neat things in the sky. Given enough sky-watching I think you'll see some really cool things.
Did you know clouds like to move in waves? This is easier seen from the air, and vertical movement from the heating air mass tends to distort our view, but on some relatively calm days you can see that clouds like to form in rows as though at the top or bottom of waves.
Have you ever stopped to watch clouds roll? If you've mixed two separate liquids together you can see them roll about before they mix. Clouds do the same rolling about as heat pushes them up and the air cools off.
Today I witnessed for the first time a cloud "dropping". I had often seen clouds rising upward because of heat but had never actually seen one appearing to drop. The appearance is quite surreal and hard to believe because it happens both quickly and slowly. It's as though someone is fluffing out a sheet on a bed in slow motion, or if you could watch ice cream melt away at high speed (which Jen would never allow).
It's a bit hard to describe, but as I watched it occur it seemed both logical and wildly mysterious. As I checked heading and altitude and turned back to the right to watch the cloud's descent I almost didn't believe I had seen it.
You should get up and see it for yourself, or if you can't just do a little cloud-gazing when you're out.
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