Satellite Image of Cheju Island

This is a pretty cool NASA image of coulds swirling around Cheju Island:

This image from January 19, 2007, was acquired by the MODIS on the Terra satellite. Featured in the image are von Karman cloud vortices off Cheju Do Isand, which is off the southwest coast of South Korea.

The highest point of the island is interacting with wind-driven clouds, causing the clouds to flow around it in large, spinning eddies. Cheju-do Island is actually home to Mt. Halla, Korea’s tallest mountain, at 6400 feet. It is likely that the vortices are forming off this mountain!

If you look at the top of the image you can see the South Korean coast and then just below that you can see the barrier Hallasan Mountain is making for the clouds blowing through.