A string of strange clouds just northwest of the Florida Keys looks like a giant floating jellyfish, or maybe the UFO from the sci-fi horror movie ‘Nope.’
A fishing influencer posted a video of the clouds from below on TikTok, set to the theme song from Netflix horror hit ‘Stranger Things’. But in reality, the cause was a well-known flying object: airplanes.
Captured from above in late January by NASA’s Terra satellite, the “Cavum clouds” are “so strange that people sometimes argue that they are signatures of flying saucers,” according to the US Space Agency, which released the image. air this week.
The true source of the Cavum clouds, sometimes called ‘hole-punch clouds’ and ‘fall streak holes’, had eluded scientists for nearly 70 years, until meteorologists finally solved the case in 2010.
They discovered that the strange shapes occur when planes fly through ‘altocumulus clouds’: irregular banks of small clouds that form between 7,000 and 23,000 feet high.
BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel has more than 1,000,000 subscribers, posted its own video of the clouds from below as they appeared. The fishing influencer set his TikTok video to the theme song from the Netflix horror hit ‘Stranger Things’
A strange cloud chain north of the Florida Keys looks like a giant floating jellyfish. Captured in January by NASA’s Terra satellite, these ‘Cavum clouds’ (above) are ‘so strange that people sometimes argue that they are signatures of flying saucers,’ according to the US Space Agency.
Scientists with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which runs the National Science Foundation’s Atmospheric Research Center, led the 2010 and 2011 studies that solved the Cavum cloud puzzle.
These mid-altitude ‘altocumulus clouds’, the UCAR team discovered, are composed of unusually pure water vapor that is ‘supercooled’, meaning it has not transformed into ice, despite the cold temperature of these droplets. floating 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
But as the plane’s wings or the movements of its propellers change the pressure around these droplets, a process called “adiabatic expansion” occurs in the resulting turbulent air vortices that break down the delicate conditions that kept the vapor liquid.
“Ice crystals beget more ice crystals as liquid droplets continue to freeze,” as NASA’s Earth Observatory notes. Adam Voiland wrote in a statement.
“The ice crystals eventually grow large enough to begin falling from the sky, leaving a void in the cloud layer.”
The “adiabatic” cooling produced by these pressure and volume changes, UCAR discovered, effectively drops the supercooled water vapor another 36 degrees Fahrenheit, creating spontaneous freezing or “homogeneous ice nucleation.”
Although these newly formed ice crystals frequently fall, leaving the mysterious “piercing” effect, sometimes they do not.
“Falling ice crystals are often visible in the center of the holes as faint traces of precipitation that never reach the ground,” noted NASA’s Voiland, “features called virga.”
Virga, which is Latin for “rod” or “branch,” is the term meteorologists use to describe streaks, wisps, or tendrils of precipitation that fall from a cloud but evaporate into the air before reaching the ground.
While these descriptions of the behavior of the supercooled droplets that form altocumulus clouds may seem exotic, the phenomenon is actually not rare.
At any given time, altocumulus clouds cover about 8 percent of the Earth’s surface.
The UCAR team’s work that finally explained the atmospheric mechanism that produces “hole-punched clouds” combined data from aircraft flights, satellite observations and weather models to develop a sound theory of the process.
As first published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society In 2010, UCAR scientists were able to demonstrate that the angle at which a plane passed through the altocumulus cloud bank changed the characteristics of Cavum’s ‘holer’.
When planes passed at an acute angle, the researchers reported, smaller, more circular Cavum were produced.
But if the craft passed through the cloud bank at a more gradual and shallow angle, a longer sister phenomenon, called “channel clouds,” with longer virga trails, occurred instead.
Above, a representative from NASA’s Earth Observatory identified key parts of its stunning January 30, 2024 satellite image of the Cavum cloud and its “Channel cloud.”
NASA’s Earth Observatory detected both types in the unique formation off the coast of the Florida Keys on January 30, 2024.
The space agency tagged both this week, when they released the satellite photo as their Image of the day.
But even with this aerial mystery solved, it’s easy for many right now to be amazed by the unusual voids and dazzling blue spaces of a Cavum cloud formation.
BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel has more than 1,000,000 subscribers, posted its own free video of the clouds from below as they occurred in the final days of January.
‘Has anyone seen clouds like these before? We were fishing in Key West #weirdweather #clouds,’ BlacktipH asked on Tik Tok.
A passing fan Edit profileresponded, “I’ve seen enough alien invasion movies to know exactly what they are.”
Planes Cause Rare ‘Pierced Clouds’ That Resemble Strange Purple UFOs at Dawn
This incredible photograph shows an otherworldly-looking sunrise with clusters of purple clouds resembling UFOs floating in the sky.
The stunning display of purple and orange was captured by gardener Adrian Sparrowhawk, 50, who said the sky was a “spooky” sight.
Golden morning light pierced the deep purple clouds that dappled the sky over Tetbury, Gloucestershire, with six clusters of thicker clouds floating below, like flying objects from a sci-fi movie.
Adrian said he stopped to photograph the sunset when he got to work at 6.40am on Monday morning as he had “never seen anything like it before”.
He said: ‘I thought I had to capture it, it was absolutely wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it. It seemed really creepy at that time of the morning.
He added that he has since been told that the cloud formations are known as “hole-punched clouds.” Also known as “drop holes,” hole clouds form when the temperature of the water in the clouds is below freezing, but the water, in a supercooled state, has not yet frozen.
Experts say the strange shapes are caused by airplanes. They form when part of the cloud layer forms ice crystals that are large enough to fall into water droplets (water below 0°C but not yet frozen).
These water droplets need a small particle to freeze or cool below -40°C. Aircraft passing through this cloud layer can cause air to expand and cool as it passes over the plane’s wings or propeller.
This change in temperature may be enough to stimulate supercooled droplets to freeze and fall from the cloud layer in this distinctive pattern.
Sometimes, holes in drop formations can expand up to 30 miles (50 km) wide within an hour of appearing. When ice particles form quickly, a domino effect occurs as water droplets connect with the crystals.
These become heavier and then suddenly begin to fall, leaving a large hole in the cloud. The faint clouds that form in the center of the hole are the falling water particles.
It is believed that the passage of airplanes is the cause of the formation of these clouds, since a pressure drop caused by their wings or propeller tips cools the air quickly.
Rainbows are sometimes seen with drooping striped clouds, thanks to light refracting off water droplets.