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.
