Cloud Vortex over South Atlantic
Cape of Good Hope | South Africa
Date of acquisition: April 24th, 2024 | 08:50:07 UTC
Sensor: Sentinel-2A L2A
Coordinates: ca. 34.5°S, 18.573°E
These Sentinel-2 images do not show the eye of a hurricane or cyclone as one might assume. Tropical cyclones have never been observed at such latitudes.
They show a rather rare phenomenon, the formation of a vortex with an eye at an altitude of about 1.5 km (Figure 1). The vortex is located slightly south of False Bay (a bay at the Cape of Good Hope in southwestern South Africa), rotates in a cyclonic direction for the southern hemisphere, and is small (about 5 km). The diameter of the central cloud-free part is about 1.5 kilometres.
Its formation is related to the winds at the land-ocean boundary and the warmer water in the nearby bay (Figure 2).
At an even higher altitude (about 3.5 km), there is a narrow band of stratocumulus clouds that casts a shadow on the vortex.
