A Von Kármán vortex street is a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow over blunt bodies. They are named after the engineer and fluid dynamicist, Theodore von Kármán. These vortices can appear on a large scale in nature when unidirectional boundary layer wind flows around isolated hills or islands, and can be visible from space if a layer of clouds are present. In this satellite picture of one of the Juan Fernández Islands, the wind at cloud level is moving from lower left to upper right, and the island is in the clear area at the lower left.
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