Turbulence

 You’d expect a ride this bumpy if you were driving an off-road vehicle over rocky, uneven terrain, but a bump bump BUMP as you glide 30,000 feet above that terrain in a modern jet liner, might surprise you, not to mention scare the bajeebers out of you. After all, you never notice hard lumps and bumps as you breathe air.It was a scary flight yesterday afternoon in going back here from our Cebu conference, the plane bumps from time to time. I saw a full dark clouds as if flatly lying above the sky.Until the pilot had spoken to us that there is a mild turbulence due to the  changing of wind direction. By the way before we took off Mactan airport , my sister had told me there was a "low pressure" in Leyte and Samar area.

What makes an airplane go bump?

Airplane bumps are caused by regions of air moving at different speeds, for example, a layer of fast-moving windy air rubbing against a layer of relatively still air. Where the two masses of air rub against each other, you get turbulence, a chaotic and unpredictable mixing of wind. This happens frequently near storm clouds, where a plume of warm air and clouds rises into cooler, upper layers.

 

As a plane flies through the boundary layer of turbulence, it will encounter sudden, random changes in wind speed. A strong tailwind might turn into a strong headwind, or an updraft might suddenly turn downward. Because the airplane is immersed in this air, you experience these wind changes as bumps. Imagine driving a car along a perfectly smooth and flat highway, except the highway itself is moving unpredictably, lurching forward and backward, up and down.