Strange cloud formation

[fplowman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EopIdYAR5BE&feature=player_embedded

This video is making its way around. I am unfamiliar in what it is that would cause a cloud formation to look like this.

I'm thinking something un-natural possibly. Any insight or speculation would be interesting.

 

[Dan Melby]

I am no expert but it looks like a " hole punch cloud" to me. Here is a link with an explanation. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mob/121103hole_punch/holepunch-main.html

 

[Richard Dickson]

Very interesting indeed!

I don't know if you tried it or not, but when I stop the video about every half second, I feel that I am seeing faint smoke rising above the buildings. I'm wondering if it could be caused by the rising heat from a burning field or something along those lines. I've also witnessed unusual cloud shapes in a low stratus layer above the cooling towers at power plants. Just another, but rather weak thought as I wasn't observing transmission lines in the video.

I kept trying to find anything that could be used as a reference for the size of the hole, but wasn't able to come up with anything of substance.

Thanks for offering the challenge.

Edit: While I was writing my thoughts, Dan offered what is possibly a better explanation. Although in the article he offered, those were listed as high clouds and I wouldn't particularly call these high. The perspective is tough to judge.

 

[Morgan Palmer]

Hmm, I would side with the hole punch idea. When I was back in East Texas we saw that an awful lot (I guess with descending traffic into DFW/military activity).

While these clouds don't look particularly high, they appear to my eye to be high enough to be so evenly disrupted only by something at altitude.

They seem to be high enough that any ground disruption by fire, smoke stacks, etc. would also have to be quite large and would create a larger area of cloud deformation.

But the tell to me is that I think it would be unlikely that surface sources would be able to create such a perfectly circular disruption.

who knows. thanks for the video!

my thoughts
mp

 

[fplowman]

Hmm, I would side with the hole punch idea. When I was back in East Texas we saw that an awful lot (I guess with descending traffic into DFW/military activity).

While these clouds don't look particularly high, they appear to my eye to be high enough to be so evenly disrupted only by something at altitude.

They seem to be high enough that any ground disruption by fire, smoke stacks, etc. would also have to be quite large and would create a larger area of cloud deformation.

But the tell to me is that I think it would be unlikely that surface sources would be able to create such a perfectly circular disruption.

who knows. thanks for the video!

my thoughts
mp

Thanks for the info Morgan. I guess Ill go with hole punch.

I think I understand what your saying. In reference to the possibility of man made phenomenon. Due to the height of the cloud formation the hole would be larger if created by stacks or other industry.

Kudos to Dan for the hole punch theory.

 

[joel ewing]

This is one wicked looking hole. It seems to be different than the ones that I've seen personally...and elsewhere. I'm waiting for someone to bring up Haarp. With all that is going on in the world....who knows. I'm almost 55.....have literally had my eyes trained upwards looking at the sky since I was about 12....and haven't seen anything quite like this. What theories seem to be at the forefront where this took place?
And to FPlowman....what's the deal regarding the at the bottom of your posts? It's lost on me...sorry, I'm dumber than I look I guess. Joel

 

[Stuart Wilson]

Over here we'd refer to it as a 'fall-streak'. I saw a fantastic one here last year that was also seen by people at least 40 miles away.

 

[Laura Duchesne]

I've seen quite a few of these in my area from time to time... they're hole punch clouds, and that wispy looking stuff in the middle of the hole is the ice crystals falling. I think they're neat.

 

[Ric Burney]

It seems that this phenom has made the rounds. A simplified explanation has appeared in a Yahoo news story here: http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93092?fp=1

 

[J Gontesky]

A link I found on another forum indicates further support for the hole punch cloud hypothesis:

http://www.meteorologynews.com/2009/10/12/hole-punch-cloud-not-ufo-spotted-over-moscow/