On the afternoon of July 5, many Tianjin netizens noticed that the sky not only began to darken, but also the clouds under the canopy were twisted into strange shapes, and the clouds were like scenes in science fiction blockbusters, which made many netizens exclaim that they had never seen it. For a time, "Tianjin's Weird Cloud" was on the popular search list of online social platforms.
A strange cloud appeared in Tianjin on the afternoon of July 5
Then some netizens have to ask, what is this weird and twisted "ugly eight monster" cloud? Is it related to bad weather? Some netizens even suspected that this was related to the earthquake. First of all, it can be made clear that this is certainly not a so-called seismic cloud, since according to the known level of science, the shape and variation of the cloud has no obvious correlation with the earthquake. Returning to the cloud itself, the strange cloud that appeared in Tianjin on the afternoon of July 5 is actually a relatively rare cloud in the atmosphere - a rough-faced cloud.
Cloud in Tianjin on July 5, picture from Weibo netizen @Tianya Haijiao Josh
What is a rough-faced cloud? An important feature of rough-faced clouds is that they have a very clear wavy structure at the bottom of the cloud, but they are more chaotic than the wavy cloud class, and have less horizontal organization, or smooth or small mottled, sometimes falling to sharp points, like observing rough sea surfaces from below. This property of rough-faced clouds allows them to produce special visual effects under different sunlight angles.
Examples of rough-faced clouds included by the World Meteorological Organization
For Tianjin, this time the rough-faced cloud showed an extremely shocking picture under the lighting conditions at that time. The reason for this is actually the turbulent air currents in the low-altitude rapids around the strong convective clouds, during which the gravitational waves are intertwined with the local turbulence, thus forming a strange picture of the clouds.
From this cause, it can be known that the essential reason for the appearance of strange rough-faced clouds is actually the strong convective activity that appeared in Tianjin on the afternoon of July 5. On the afternoon of July 5, from the Fengyun No. 4 high-definition visible light satellite cloud map, the cold vortex in the south of The cold vortex in North China stimulated a large number of strong convective clouds, some of which appeared to be very three-dimensional in the sun, which meant that there was a strong convective activity in the local area, and it was part of these strong convective clouds that hit Tianjin and brought strange rough-faced clouds.
In addition to the strange rough-faced clouds, strong convective clouds swept through the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region caused fierce thunderstorms in many parts of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and monitoring data showed that from July 5 to July 6, there were heavy to heavy rains in many places in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and there were heavy rainstorms with 24-hour rainfall of more than 100 mm in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. This is actually the embodiment of the frequent cold vortex activities in the northern region of China this year, in the middle of summer in the north this year, there will be many such clouds, and the rainfall in many places may be too much.