Weather Words: Gravity Waves
- - Weather Words: Gravity Waves
Jennifer Gray February 17, 2026 at 4:30 AM
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Gravity waves are a type of cloud pattern that have little to do with gravity and more to do with the waves. Think of a rock being thrown in a lake or pond and the ripples it creates. As the ripples get farther from the center, the more spaced out they become. This is a similar pattern that occurs with gravity waves in the cloud context. They are an interesting phenomenon that was captured beautifully earlier this month over the mid-Atlantic.
The small ripples in the clouds that look similar to ripples in water are the gravity waves.
Gravity waves have to involve a trigger. Whether it’s a mountain range or a thunderstorm updraft. It’s key that the air rises in a stable environment, so the air parcel will naturally come back down. In an unstable environment, the air parcel will continue to rise, never coming back down to make a wave formation.
Once the air parcel rises, the stable environment will force the parcel back down to find its equilibrium. As that happens, it will bypass its equal point and sink below it. Then, it will rise to find equilibrium and pass it again, creating this wavelike motion through the atmosphere.
In this environment, the rising motion of air will create clouds, while the sinking motion will create clear skies. That’s where the wavelike cloud pattern is formed that looks like rows.
Gravity waves are notorious for causing clear-air turbulence in the skies.
Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
