What the Heck Is This?

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Probably won't be too hard to figure out what this is, in general. But can you guess specifically what you're looking at?

No hints on this one.

Continue to see the full image and an explanation …

It's not cotton. It's a view of cumulus clouds in the late afternoon, viewed from an airplane that's above the clouds.

You don't have to be a meteorologist to glean something from the clouds. On our sister site OurAmazingPlanet there's an article on how to read clouds and a cool cloud-reading gallery to go with it.

Puffy cumulus illuminated by late afternoon sun far below a NOAA airplane returning to base at after a mission. NOAA flies hurricanes to learn more about how one storm is shaping up and to learn more about the storms in general.
CREDIT: NOAA

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