Fwd: EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON! Bubbles!!

[nannan]

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  HERE'S SOMETHING  AMAZING

Suddenly  the shorelines north of Sydney were transformed into the Cappuccino  Coast .
Foam  swallowed an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including  the local lifeguards'
centre,  in a freak display of nature at Yamba in New South Wales .

One  minute a group of teenage surfers were waiting to catch a wave, the  next they were
swallowed  up in a giant bubble bath. The foam was so light that they could  puff it out of
their  hands and watch it float away.  

 
Boy  in the bubble bath: Tom Woods, 12, emerges from the clouds of foam  after deciding

that  surfing was not an option

It  stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific in a phenomenon not seen  at the beach for
more  than three decades. Scientists explain that the foam is created by  impurities in the
ocean,  such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and  excretions from
seaweed.  All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the  water to form
bubbles.  These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the  surface by the
current  towards the shore. As a wave starts to form on the surface, the  motion of the water
causes  the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become  foam.

The  foam 'surfs' towards shore until the wave 'crashes', tossing the  foam into the  air.

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Whitewash:  The foam was so thick it came all the way up to the surf club

'It's  the same effect you get when you whip up a milk shake in a blender,'  explains a marine
expert.  'The more powerful the swirl, the more foam you create on the  surface and the lighter
it  becomes.' In this case, storms off the New South Wales Coast and  further north off
Queensland  had created a huge disturbance in the ocean, hitting a stretch of  water where
there  was a particularly high amount of the substances which form into  bubbles. As for 12-
year-old  beachgoer Tom Woods, who has been surfing since he was two, riding a  wave was
out  of the question. 'Me and my mates just spent the afternoon leaping  about in that stuff,'
he  said.

'It  was quite cool to touch and it was really weird. It was like clouds  of air - you could hardly feel  it.'

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Children  play among all the foam which was been whipped up by cyclonic  conditions.

 

 




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