Waves That Tear Fluids Apart

The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability occurs when two fluids move at different speeds across a shared boundary, creating visible cloud waves.

Surface tension has its limits.

Hermann von Helmholtz discovered this instability in 1868. He noted sharp edges tear fluids apart. William Thomson modeled ocean wind waves.

Even the Red Spot gets windblown.

In the early 1920s, Lewis Fry Richardson found shear instability forms only where shear overcomes static stability from stratification.

Lev Landau first studied the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in compressible flows in 1944; Sergei Ivanovich Syrovatskii refined it in 1954.

Kelvin–Helmholtz instability ideas appeared then.

Clouds never file observation reports.