The essential component of wavy flow is the vortex. In isolation, a single vortex simply influences its surroundings to orbit around itself at a speed proportional to the inverse square of the distance to the vortex's axis. When a large number of vortexes are put together in a specific pattern, certain large-scale shapes can be created; when put together in a statistically-significant pattern, true fluid turbulence can be simulated; but when completely disorganized, they describe the flowfield seen here. This image represents 1000 streamlines in a field of 10,000 vorticies.