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The Cloud Appreciation Society: Rare & Unusual Formations

A

Anonymous

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Ok clouds are always strange but no as strange as this.
Between 11:30pm and 00:15am there was a giant circle of cloud around the moon. The moon was quite high and it was a clear sky around it but then you saw a circle and behind that was a cloudy sky. I thought it was the circle of radiation the moon gives off (you know the light from the moon and its red and yellowish) but it was quite a way away.
This 'circle of cloud' was seen at 04:30am the same style and it as big as the other. Both me and a few friends all saw it. did anyone else see this 'circle of cloud'?
 
Yes, I saw it, beautiful wasn't it!
My family are hereditary witches and we're always ringing each other to comment on the condition of the Moon. The lines were buzzing last night!

What we saw is called something like a 'frost halo'. You only get it with a fullish Moon, a clear sky and a sudden dip in temperature. Or so I seem to remember. I first saw it on top of a hill with a folly on top (Mow Cop) and it was just awesome.

Very difficult to photograph too!
 
What Escargot said, it's basically the light of the moon reflecting off of ice crystals high in the atmosphere after a sudden drop of temperature......it's pretty cool......
 
Anyone remember the 'luminous cloud' of a few years ago? It was seen all over the country at once, in high summer, in an otherwise clear sky, and glowed in various colours. My whole street was out looking at it for hours and lots of photos were taken.
 
How come I never seem to see such interesting things? I'm beginning to believe that I may well exist in a parallel universe that is identical to the one everyone else is in, only with all the good bits removed...
 
It's called a lunar halo, and some pictures are here, here and here.

I saw it coming back from the pub last night. Very pretty :)

For a google image search on Lunar Halos click here.
 
not *quite* on subject, but...

I ran outside my 'rents house one day when it looked green/yellow outside. It was bizarre. The air was absolutely still, and the light barely filtered through the clouds. The sky had a very unhealthy greenish tint; just enough to make the scenery look surreal. I think there were some tornadoes that touched down in the area that day.


Also... Going up a mountain on my way to university, *EVERYTHING* turned deep purple as the sun was setting. That really shook me, but it happened again one or two weeks later. Very weird.
 
Yay, I experienced similar during my time in Kansas. The sky went grey, then black, then a really odd shade of green & everything went very quiet. This was just before the twister arrived and the world went...:spinning

Kansas was great for weird weather stuff. Lightning, hail the size of golf balls, you name it. I used to sit in the library on the only hill for miles, watching tornadoes skim across the distant horizon.
 
When I was a schoolkid, in the late 60s, one June day, the sky came over really dark, as dark as night (only it was darker because none of the street lights were working). It lasted most of the afternoon, and then there was an enormous hail storm. Apparently there was a band of cloud several miles thick (or so the meteorologists at the time reckoned). It was really wierd and rather frightening.

Carole
 
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When I was about 12 I lived about 3 miles from the sea and the whole family went out one night because we could hear this tremenderous booming and crashing. The moon was high and had a sort of fog halo about it, though the night was not foggy at ground level. Apart from the noise the air was still. This was 1964 and the whole family thought that WWIII had started.

Then we realised that the other houses were not disturbed. and if you walked 20 metres from our house the noise disappeared. We eventually realised we were hearing the sound of the sea on the shore but magnified. How or why we didn't know.

It was only later that the position of our house in a curve in the flank of a hill and an inversion layer must have been to blame. Frightening but a shame we worked out the reason.
 
Intaglio, things aren't less wonderful when you understand them, just less mysterious! It sounds like you had a natural 'whispering gallery' there. An elliptical room is ideal for this - if you stand at one focus and whisper, the sound refects off all the walls (or, the one, curved wall!) and converges at the other focus, where you'll be clearly heard.
 
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did anyone else see this 'circle of cloud'?
Click to expand...

We saw it. Saturday night / Sunday morning as we were leaving a party. I wondered at the time whether any others at this BB were seeing the same thing. We're on the Isle of Man at the moment. It was about 1.30 am as we walked back across town. We also both saw a shooting star cut across the circle.

My girlfriend's brother is a science bod and explained what it was. An incredible thing to see - and since my neighbour (above) was still awake I got him out for a look too.
 
Lenticular Cloud

A nice (if not American-style cloud spectacular) lenticular cloud I spotted this afternoon. I can see how they can be confused with UFOs - it was constantly changing shape, and about 5 minutes after this photo, it had completely "disappeared" into other 'normal' clouds.

I say nice because it isn't that fantastic (quite rough edged), but I haven't noticed one in the UK before.

[edit] Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this, but I didn't think it quite qualified for the "Earth Mysteries" forum, since it wasn't on Earth and it wasn't a mystery :)
 
Very pretty, is that Arthurs Seat?

I used to have a similar view from my bedroom window when I lived in Edinburgh. I could see some ruins from my window though, so maybe it was the other side.

Nowadays the view from my window is a skip:cross eye
 
Ooh I drunkenly stumbled up, and then down (albeit at a much faster speed) that last year :)
Nice photo :)
 
wow

Hey thats much more beautiful than where I live! I wanna go!
:D
 
These three clouds I saw about a year ago looked odd , though they arent lenticular . They were actually below the high cloud level , not in a clear sky .
( disregard the orbs :rolleyes: )
 
Nice clouds. I think clouds are neglected, people should be looking at them more.

Actually, the definition of lenticular is "convex on both sides", so your clouds are more lenticular than mine was ;)
 
lovely clouds you've all got there

I hold no truck with the idea that leniticular clouds are mistaken for alien spaceships tho, because... who would? Do you know anyone who yuou reckon would mistake one of them for a flying saucer?;)
 
It's a Well Known Fact that lenticular clouds are UFOs in diguise.

But I don't know why they bother, since it's also a Well Known Fact that UFOs can become invisible whenever they choose...

(It's a tough life being a Fortean, but someone's got to do it.)
 
Originally posted by rynner

But I don't know why they bother, since it's also a Well Known Fact that UFOs can become invisible whenever they choose...

Dolphins and whales are also UFOs in disguise then as I can prove by the dozens of photos I have of uninteresting bits of the ocean where these alien creatures where just a second before :)

Sorry, guys... those cloud photos are indeed beautiful. I have a couple myself but unfortunately don't have a scanner so can't post them (time to start the "Dear Father Christmas letters").

Jane.
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Faggus said:
lovely clouds you've all got there

I hold no truck with the idea that leniticular clouds are mistaken for alien spaceships tho, because... who would? Do you know anyone who yuou reckon would mistake one of them for a flying saucer?;)
Click to expand...
I don't actually know anyoneone, but a few years ago someone in Morecambe did just that. He took a photo of a 'UFO' that spent half an hour hovering over his house and sent it to the Lancashire Evening Post, which printed it on the front page under the headline "Is This A Flying Saucer?" or some such. It was a very obvious lenticular cloud (I've seen several), and dozens of readers lost no time in informing the paper of this.
 
are they called lenticular clouds cuz they're shaped like lentils?
 
I always thought lenticular refered to a shape like a lens.

But apparently it can also refer to a lentil!
 
Lenticular clouds...

I was looking through some photographs of a walking trip to Scotland a few years ago, thought you might like to see these surreal beauties!:)
 
cool!
if it wasn't for the brick stack thing, it'd look like the martians returning home.
 
David, those are very nice indeed. Much more impressive than my one! :D

And, thanks to synchronicity, I was thinking about this exact thread earlier this afternoon, so naturally it came as no surprise when it appeared at the top of the New Threads list :)

Oh and Pinklefish, Cactus isn't my friend, ever since he stuck spines in the back of my hand and it was sore.
 
Thanks Taras and Pinkle!

The clouds changed before our eyes!
They became like, 'two-tier'!...


Leggit! They are coming!:p
 
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