Hole Punch Cloud
November 24, 2008 - ABC News
It was an odd, but not oddly shaped, cloud formation and it caught the eye of many in the Bay area Monday morning. ABC Action News viewer Jerry Kessie grabbed his camera and snapped shots of the cumulus ringous and sent them to ABC Action News where we have posted them on our website.
Photo journalist Scott Eason and Captain Al spotted the unidentified hole in the sky saying, "We had just landed the chopper after doing morning traffic. So we got out of the helicopter and looked up and it was just this strange perfect shape in the clouds. So i got out my camera phone and snapped a picture of it." So what is it and should we be worried?
Meteorologist Charlie Paxton at the National Weather Service, in Ruskin says, "No!" He explains they are almost completely natural, "The clouds had a hole in them basically. A jet went through the super cooled water cloud. Turned to ice. And we end up with a hole in the cloud with an ice cloud in the middle."
Plain and simple, the super cooled water that makes up some clouds at about 25-thousand feet, latch on to the dust, or exhaust particles being spit out as a commercial jetliner flies through the cloud. The now droplets then instantly freeze crystal clear. And there you have it. You got the "fixins of a hole where the rain freezes thin".
According to ABC Action News Meteorologist Denis Philips they're commonly referred to as hole punch clouds. "From our perspective it looks like a hole in the middle of a bigger cloud. It happened in Mobile, Alabama a few years back. Lots of pictures on the internet. So it happens. It's not that unusual but then again, we wouldn't be doing a story on it if it happened every day."
At the same time though, don't confuse them with lenticular clouds, usually formed near mountains because of swirling winds, or UFO's, best seen in major motion pictures like Will Smith's "Independence Day", or the flying "cup and sauce" best captured on Photoshop.
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