[NASA] Australia’s Cloudy Beauty

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3. Australia’s Cloudy Beauty

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Fog fills networks of river valleys in eastern Victoria in an image captured by the

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(Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s

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satellite at 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time) on May 11, 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

It’s autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it’s fog season in the

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. NASA’s

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satellite captured this view of morning fog filling valleys in several national parks across the mountains of eastern Victoria in May.  

As nights lengthen with the season, the atmosphere has more time to cool and approach the

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—the temperature at which the air becomes saturated and water vapor can condense into

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. Because cold air is denser than warm air, it sinks and drains into valleys, allowing fog to develop there first. In low-elevation areas, radiation fog usually fades as the Sun warms the ground, but it tends to linger in mountain valleys because they remain shaded longer. On this day,

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shows the fog persisting for about two hours.

Fog is a low-lying type of cloud composed of tiny water droplets suspended in the air. The main difference between a cloud and fog is that the base of fog reaches the ground, while the base of a cloud is generally well above the surface. Radiation fog forms in clear, calm conditions at night. In this case, a blast of

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primed the region by moistening land surfaces a few days prior to the arrival of a

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that brought calmer, warmer conditions that were conducive to fog formation. 

Many valleys in the mountains also have rivers, streams, and lakes, which amplified the process by providing a ready supply of water vapor. In the image above, zones of fog have formed along several water bodies, including the Mitta Mitta River, Buffalo River, Livingston Creek, Lake Dartmouth, and Snowy River.  

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An arch-shaped cloud drifts over Port Phillip Bay in this image captured by the

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(Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s

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satellite at 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time) on May 11, 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

The same conditions fueled another noteworthy cloud a few hundred kilometers to the southwest. At about 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time), the Terra satellite captured an arch-shaped cloud over

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, roughly stretching from St. Leonards on the bay’s western shore to Mount Eliza on the eastern side.

The feature likely formed as converging

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interacted with the horseshoe-shaped terrain that defines the bay. Geostationary satellite imagery shows the arch-shaped cloud

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across the bay as the valley fog to the northeast faded.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA 

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 and 

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. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

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May 11, 2026

JPEG (15.72 MB)

References & Resources

• Bureau of Meteorology, via
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  (2026, April 26)
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  ? Accessed May 11, 2026.
• Bureau of Meteorology, via
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  (2025, May 15)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• MetService (2016)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2026)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2018, October 26)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• NOAA (2023, September 29)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• Parks Victoria,
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.
• Zoom Earth (2026, May 11)
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  . Accessed May 11, 2026.

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