Here's a question that came up when I was teaching CPL Met.
Background: Geostrophic wind is defined as a theoretical wind that would occur above 3000' (the friction layer) when two forces, gradient force and coriolis force, are in balance along straight isobars. In other words, geostrophic force acts parallel to straight isobars.
There's a good animated demo of this at:
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/gu...w/gifs/geo.mov
It's been said that few things in nature are ever perfectly straight. Without straight isobars, there can be no perfectly geostrophic wind.
The question is,
when/where would isobars even come close to being straight?