Mike Tryon <<email>> sends this picture and description from Eddie Kisfaludy, one of his colleagues at Scripps:

I took this photo at 8,500' while flying offshore Laguna Beach, CA on November 19th at 9:30AM with a Cannon G9 handheld camera and thought you would enjoy it.

Miguel Miller, a forecaster at the San Diego National Weather Service had this to say about the photo: "We jokingly refer to this weather feature as a "stratocane", because it looks like a hurricane in the stratus cloud deck. Imagine a stream with water going around rocks. In the lee of the stream flow, you'll see several swirling eddies. Sometimes we get the giant Catalina Eddy that can cover the entire Southern California Bight. At other times the surface winds flow around the offshore islands and produce smaller eddies in the low stratus cloud deck. That is what I believe is happening in this photo. They can be quite impressive from a satellite perspective."