Cavum clouds, also called hole-punch clouds and fallstreak holes, look so odd that people sometimes argue they are signatures of flying saucers or other unidentified anomalous phenomena.
Cavum clouds, also called hole-punch clouds and fallstreak holes, look so odd that people sometimes argue they are signatures of flying saucers or other unidentified anomalous phenomena. Seen from below, they can look like a large circle or ellipse has been cut neatly from the clouds, with feathery wisps left in the middle of the hole.
They are equally impressive when seen from above. This image shows a cluster of cavum over the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida’s west coast on January 30, 2024. It was captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite.
Otherworldly explanations are not required to explain the eye-catching cloud formation. While scientists have periodically mentioned the phenomena in scientific journals and speculated about their cause since the 1940s, a pair of studies published in 2010 and 2011, led by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) scientists, laid out an explanation that put other theories to rest. They are caused by airplanes moving through banks of altocumulus clouds.
Read more at NASA Earth Observatory
