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Strange things happen in the sky ...

Cool cloud produces alien image

When Jonathan Sabin emailed us with this terrific cloud image, we jumped at the chance to find out what created it. So we contacted Jeff Callaghan, severe storm forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane, Australia.

Here's how Jonathan described his encounter with an alien species:

"The attached photo is of a cloud formation that appeared over Bradenton,
Florida on the morning of November 9, 2000 at about 8:45 am.

"A co-worker came to my office and asked if I had seen it - I replied
that I had not, and grabbed a digital camera (thus the less-than-terrific exposure -sorry).

"I've never seen anything like this - due to it's symmetry, and the fact
that it appears as if it were 'dropped' into place, it doesn't seem like
a natural formation.

"Any insight into what this may have been will be appreciated!"

This is what Jeff Callaghan had to say:

"Apparently the deck of Altocumulus (the surrounding 'mackerel sky) consists of super cooled water drops (as low as minus 40 degrees). Ice crystals form and they grow at the expense of the super cooled water drops. This is  called glaciation and refers to the sudden transformation of super cooled cloud droplets into ice crystals. 

"The glaciated cloud lowers the vapour pressure around its edges which evaporated the super cooled cloud droplets giving the sharp edge to the cloud.

"All clouds above the freezing level contain super cooled water drops at some
stage and altocumulus is predominately made up of super cooled water drops
well below zero.

Pretty cool, eh?

 © weather-wise.com 2000.  

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