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Fallstreak Holes / 'Hole Punch' Clouds

Sid: I just want to be clear about this ...

Was this semi-circular space located down at the horizon as indicated by your sketch?

Your description of the edges / border fits a hole-punch / fallstreak cloud formation, but I don't recall seeing this phenomenon low on the horizon like that. I suppose it could represent a fallstreak at a great (horizontal / lateral) distance, partially obscured by the horizon.
 
Sid: I just want to be clear about this ...

Was this semi-circular space located down at the horizon as indicated by your sketch?

Your description of the edges / border fits a hole-punch / fallstreak cloud formation, but I don't recall seeing this phenomenon low on the horizon like that. I suppose it could represent a fallstreak at a great (horizontal / lateral) distance, partially obscured by the horizon.
Hi 'EnolaGaia.' Yes, it was just like that, and the view was as I look directly across the top of a local valley at approximately five miles in distance, and to point out at a distance where I could easily see Buzzards and Crows flying around and within.

I even sent a photograph of it to Radio Gloucestershire's Weatherman (I think it could have been 'Ian Fergusson' at the time - if I remember correctly), but never received an explanation for it.

Unfortunately, a short while after reporting it, a Microsoft Update wiped out a good few photos from my computer collection and that photo was one of them.

The way that the wispy clouds that were visible around it's circumference above my field of view at about half-a-mile across the valley were being gradually pulled into the top of the 'bubble' then just disappeared.

I noted at the time that it appeared as a half-round-dome without a lower half, not a full dome or bubble of a warmed air 'hole,' though we do get those appearing here which gliders favour, though I have always suspected it must have somehow been created by what looked like trapped hot air, but maybe not, as I have never understood 'how' it was the shape that it was.
 
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Thanks for the clarifications ...

My first guess, then, remains the same - a fallstreak / hole punch phenomenon seen from a distance and angle that yielded the appearance of a semi-circular 'dome' on the horizon.

The only alternative that comes to mind, given your description of the surrounding clouds being drawn toward the 'top of the bubble', would be the reverse effect - i.e., a notably hot / hotter discrete mass of air rising through a cloud ceiling. This strikes me as less likely. For one thing, it would require a localized source or mass of air notably warmer than the surrounding atmosphere. Second, it seems to me the warm rising air would be more humid than the air at an altitude where the fallstreak effect is usually seen, and that should have generated additional clouds (via condensation) around the immediate border of the hole (and perhaps seemed to push clouds away rather than draw them in).
 
Thanks for the clarifications ...

My first guess, then, remains the same - a fallstreak / hole punch phenomenon seen from a distance and angle that yielded the appearance of a semi-circular 'dome' on the horizon.

The only alternative that comes to mind, given your description of the surrounding clouds being drawn toward the 'top of the bubble', would be the reverse effect - i.e., a notably hot / hotter discrete mass of air rising through a cloud ceiling. This strikes me as less likely. For one thing, it would require a localized source or mass of air notably warmer than the surrounding atmosphere. Second, it seems to me the warm rising air would be more humid than the air at an altitude where the fallstreak effect is usually seen, and that should have generated additional clouds (via condensation) around the immediate border of the hole (and perhaps seemed to push clouds away rather than draw them in).
Thanks for that 'EnolaGaia.'
Well, the whole of this 'half-dome' that I saw from my position which was from my back garden, was situated directly over a large area of flat topped common ground, which could well have been heated more than it's immediate surroundings on that day, as it was a fairly hot day and from memory quite airless.
 
Hmmmm ... :thought:

In that case, maybe the inverse fallstreak (i.e., hot air mass rising to punch a hole in a cloud ceiling) isn't as unlikely as I'd originally thought.
 
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Hmmmm ... :thought:

In that case, maybe the inverse fallstreak (i.e., hot air mass rising to punch a hole in a cloud ceiling) isn't as unlikely as I'd originally thought.
By-the-way 'Enolagaia,' I've only ever witnessed this weather effect once here in thirty-one years.
 
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