Fallstreak Holes / 'Hole Punch' Clouds

[Jerry_B]

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040112.html

What could create a huge hole the clouds? Such a hole, likely hundreds of meters across, was photographed last month from a driveway near Mobile, Alabama, USA. Very unusual to see, hole-punch clouds like this are still the topic of meteorological speculation.

 

[mendhak]

Aliens farted.

 

[gyrtrash]

I'm sure I saw that pic last year on another website. I think they called it 'The Angel Cloud' 'cos it reminded them of angel wings!

 

[stonedog3]

aw... I've come over all fluffy....

Kath

 

[Anonymous]

Argh! Huge sky-trilobites!

 

[Anonymous]

For goodness sake! It's a cloud circle. Doug and Dave have been tootling around with planks of wood and lengths of rope, whilst flying along on deckchairs suspended from large quantities of helium filled party ballons.

 

[Anonymous]

I have seen similar clouds over the North Cascades... I even have a picture but I don't think it's scanned.

 

[TheQuixote]

BBCi News

'Hole in sky' amazes scientists

also links to 'hole-punch' clouds over Australia, and this link from the above, Florida Today, has a number of images of the clouds.

 

[nowt5]

thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... exico.html
what do you think? could it really be a ufo?

Link is dead. Here is the cited photo, salvaged from the Wayback Machine ...

SOURCE: https://web.archive.org/web/2010102...y-UFO-cloud-returns-to-skies-over-Mexico.html

 

[danny_cogdon]

Its a rare, and very spectacular, fallstreak cloud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallstreak_hole

For others have a look at this Google image search page.

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=fallstreak+cloud&gbv=2&aq=f&oq=

 

[coaly]

Others believe it could be a porthole for UFOs to enter or leave the Earth's atmosphere.

I had to laugh at this! They might as well have just put this...

"Some people believe it is where God poked his finger in the sky to see if it was warm enough."

:lol:

 

[escargot]

"Speculation is rife on the internet - aliens, secret weather modification technology, or even some distortion of reality, caused by the Large Hadron Collider."

Typical shite Sun reporting, contradicting its own lies in the same breath:

Even weather experts have been left dumbfounded by the extraordinary sighting.

A Met office investigator examined the freak sighting and said its cause is "unknown".

Sarah Holland, Met Office spokesman, said: "This is what is called a fallstreak cloud, otherwise known as a holepunch cloud"

Nicely explained, Danny!
I carry my camera everywhere and often take pictures of the sky. Nothing as spectacular as that yet though. We live in hope! :spinning

 

[danny_cogdon]

Nicely explained, Danny!
I carry my camera everywhere and often take pictures of the sky. Nothing as spectacular as that yet though. We live in hope! :spinning

I've seen one atmospheric phenomenon I can't quite explain. I was walking up the road with a friend. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and in the west I spotted what looked like a rectangular patch of dark bands in the sky.

I was wearing polarising sunglasses at the time so took them off to see if it was some effect caused by them. It wasn't. The dark bands were still there to the unaided eye.

At that point I noticed my friend, who was also wearing sunglasses, had taken his off and was looking at the same thing.

Neither of us could explain what the hell we were looking at.

 

[escargot]

See, that's why I carry the camera. I'd have a fighting chance of getting a snap of something weird like that!

 

[danny_cogdon]

I wish I'd had a camera the night I was coming back from the pub and looked up to see a huge fireball breaking up in the upper atmosphere!

Myself and two friends saw it and we all said "Whoooah!" in unison.

 

[linesmachine]

That's really interesting. Might it be worth contacting the met office to see if they have an explanation?

 

[danny_cogdon]

That's really interesting. Might it be worth contacting the met office to see if they have an explanation?

No need. It was a meteorite. Just a bloody big one that actually left a flaming trail behind it and broke up into several pieces.

 

[eburacum]

Nicely explained, Danny!
I carry my camera everywhere and often take pictures of the sky. Nothing as spectacular as that yet though. We live in hope! :spinning

I've seen one atmospheric phenomenon I can't quite explain. I was walking up the road with a friend. It was a beautiful, cloudless day and in the west I spotted what looked like a rectangular patch of dark bands in the sky.

I was wearing polarising sunglasses at the time so took them off to see if it was some effect caused by them. It wasn't. The dark bands were still there to the unaided eye.

At that point I noticed my friend, who was also wearing sunglasses, had taken his off and was looking at the same thing.

Neither of us could explain what the hell we were looking at.

One remote possibility is that you were looking at some manifestation of Haidinger's Brush
http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html
it is a polarization phenomenon, but it is visible without polarizing glasses (apparently)

note that it can take a number of different forms, but none of them closely match what you describe.

 

[danny_cogdon]

One remote possibility is that you were looking at some manifestation of Haidinger's Brush
http://www.polarization.com/haidinger/haidinger.html
it is a polarization phenomenon, but it is visible without polarizing glasses (apparently)

note that it can take a number of different forms, but none of them closely match what you describe.

Thanks for that link but you're right, it doesn't really describe what we saw.

What we did see was a series of about 8 bands of 'darkness' in a clear blue sky in the form of a slightly rounded rectangle. It did look like some sort of polarisation phenomanon but not one I've ever heard of before.

I'd love to figure out what it was.

 

[uair01]

Its a rare, and very spectacular, fallstreak cloud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallstreak_hole

I once read a description of this phenomenon as "a big asshole in the sky". Admittedly, there is some resemblance

 

[danny_cogdon]

I once read a description of this phenomenon as "a big asshole in the sky". Admittedly, there is some resemblance

Hopefully nothing emerges from it! :shock:

 

[marion]

I've seen two from my bathroom window.
Last year

Couple of nights ago

 

[OneWingedBird]

Nice!

 

[Mythopoeika]

Great pics! What would cause that?
An invisible flying saucer?

 

[eburacum]

Here are a lot of fallstreak hole clouds from the Cloud Appreciation Society
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/fin ... loud84&i=0

I think they are someimes caused by aircraft disturbing a thin layer of cirrostratus, but that doesn;t seem to be the only, or even the main cause. They are often a couple of kilometres across.

 

[eburacum]

I think that the main cause for a fall streak hole is the increasing weight of the crystals causing them to fall, dragging the air down into the distinctive central funnel shape.

The falling air drags more and more cloud down with it, creating a hole in the stratus layer.

 

[Tribble]

Large fallstreak hole photographed in Victoria, Australia :

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/wormhole-appeared-sky-its-blowing-6797693

 

[eburacum]

Large fallstreak hole photographed in Victoria, Australia :

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/wormhole-appeared-sky-its-blowing-6797693

I love the rainbow-coloured halo effect in the fall-streak hole. I think it is a section of the 22º halo.

 

[EnolaGaia]

This SciTechDaily article includes photos of fallstreak / hole punch clouds as seen from orbit.

Fallstreak Holes: Unusual Atmospheric Phenomenon Wows People in the Southern United States

The natural-color (above) and false-color (below) images on this page, acquired on January 29, 2021, show fallstreak holes west of Atlanta, Georgia. The natural-color image further below shows a similar scene on January 7, 2021, northwest of Miami, Florida. The locations are more than 500 miles apart, but the physics behind the phenomenon is the same. All of the images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. ...

Fallstreak holes, also known as hole-punch clouds, are the result of cold air temperatures and atmospheric instability. Viewed from below, it can appear as if part of the cloud is falling out of the sky. As it turns out, that is actually what’s happening.

The phenomenon occurs in mid-level clouds composed of liquid water droplets that are super-cooled; that is, the droplets remain liquid even when temperatures are below the typical freezing point of water (32°F, or 0°C). But even super-cooled droplets have their limits. The additional cooling that occurs over the wings of aircraft, for example, can push the droplets to the point of freezing as an airplane passes through the cloud layer. Ice crystals beget more ice crystals as the liquid droplets continue to freeze. They eventually grow heavy enough that the ice crystals fall out of the sky, leaving behind a void in the cloud layer. ...

FULL STORY (With More Photos): https://scitechdaily.com/fallstreak...on-wows-people-in-the-southern-united-states/

 

[Sid]

Here is a sketch to illustrate my skyline that I viewed a few years ago now on a hot Summers Day.
I never found reference as to regards what this type of cloud/atmospheric condition this was, but this is how it appeared, as a full dome - a half bubble, with thin streaks of cloud at the edges of it which were being sucked inwards towards it's centre, with a couple of Buzzards, and a few Crows flying around and inside it.