How’s this for a couple of really interesting pics to come up within a few days of each other? The one above shows a clear hole in the clouds near King Island at the NW corner of Tassie – you can just see the island in the top right corner.

The hole is hundreds of kilometres in diameter. It’s the result of an intense high pressure cell, that is, an almost circular mass of cold air pressing down and forcing the clouds away. You can see the anticlockwise pattern to the clouds. Anticlockwise = anticyclone = high pressure cell in the southern hemisphere.

This is circular too, but this time it’s lightning! It was shot over West Africa by an ESA astronaut. Wow, that’s some flash.

They are from http://www.universetoday.com  Good site. I check it every day.