NASA has captured ‘creepy’ gaps in the clouds over Florida that have been linked to UFO reports and can be seen from SPACE

A chain of bizarre clouds just northwest of the Florida Keys resembles a giant floating jellyfish, or perhaps the UFO from the sci-fi horror film “Nope.”

A fishing influencer posted a video of the clouds from below on TikTok, set to the theme music of Netflix’s horror hit ‘Stranger Things’. But in reality, a familiar flying object was the cause: airplanes.

The “Cavum clouds,” captured from above by NASA’s Terra satellite in late January, are “so strange that people sometimes claim they are signatures of flying saucers,” according to the US Space Agency, which released the overhead image this week.

The true source of Cavum clouds, also called ‘hole-punch clouds’ and ‘fallstreak holes’, had eluded scientists for almost 70 years until meteorologists finally cleared up the matter in 2010.

The strange shapes, they discovered, are formed when planes fly through ‘altocumulus clouds’: patchy banks of small clouds that form between 2,000 and 7,000 meters altitude.

BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel has more than 1,000,000 subscribers, posted its own video of the clouds from below as they formed. The fishing influencer set his TikTok video to the theme music of Netflix’s horror hit ‘Stranger Things’

A bizarre array of clouds north of the Florida Keys resembles a giant floating jellyfish. These ‘Cavum clouds’ (above), captured in January by NASA’s Terra satellite, are “so strange that people sometimes claim they are signatures of flying saucers,” according to the US Space Agency.

Scientists with the University company for atmospheric research (UCAR), which manages the National Science Foundation’s Center for Atmospheric Research, led the 2010 and 2011 studies that solved the riddle of the Cavum clouds.

These mid-altitude “altocumulus clouds,” the UCAR team discovered, are composed of unusually pure water vapor that is “supercooled,” meaning it has not transformed into ice, despite the cold temperature of these floating droplets at 5 degrees Fahrenheit .

But as the plane’s wings or the movements of its propellers change the pressure around these droplets, a process called “adiabatic expansion” takes place in the subsequent eddies of turbulent air, breaking the delicate conditions that keep the vapor liquefied kept.

“Ice crystals produce more ice crystals as the liquid droplets continue to freeze,” says NASA Earth Observatory. Adam Voiland wrote in one rack.

‘The ice crystals eventually become so heavy that they fall from the sky, leaving a void in the cloud layer.’

The “adiabatic” cooling produced by these pressure and volume changes, UCAR found, effectively drops the supercooled water vapor another 36 degrees Fahrenheit, causing spontaneous freezing or “homogeneous ice nucleation.”

While these newly formed ice crystals often fall, creating the eerie “punch” effect, sometimes that doesn’t happen.

“The falling ice crystals are often visible at the center of the holes as irregular precipitation trails that never reach the ground,” NASA’s Voiland noted, “features called virga.”

Virga, Latin for “rod” or “branch,” is the term meteorologists use to describe the streaks, wisps, or tendrils of precipitation that fall from a cloud but evaporate into the air before ever reaching the ground.

While these descriptions of the behavior of the supercooled droplets that make up altocumulus clouds may sound exotic, in reality the phenomenon is not rare.

At any given time, altocumulus clouds cover about 8 percent of the Earth’s surface.

The UCAR team’s work that ultimately explained the atmospheric mechanism that produces ‘hole punch clouds’ combined data from aircraft flights, satellite observations and weather models to develop a robust theory of the process.

As first published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2010, UCAR scientists were able to show that the angle at which an aircraft flew through the altocumulus cloud bank changed the characteristics of Cavum’s ‘hole punch’.

When planes flew through it at an acute angle, the researchers reported, smaller and more round Cavum were produced.

But as the craft swept through the cloud bank at a more gradual and shallower angle, a longer sister phenomenon called “channel clouds” with longer virga paths emerged instead.

Above, a NASA Earth Observatory representative identified key parts of their stunning January 30, 2024 satellite image of the Cavum Cloud and the subsequent ‘Canal Cloud’.

NASA’s Earth Observatory discovered both species in the unique formation off the coast of the Florida Keys on January 30, 2024.

The space agency labeled both as its own this week when it posted the satellite photo Image of the day.

But even with this sky mystery solved, many at this point can easily be impressed by the unusual voids and striking blue holes of a Cavum cloud formation.

BlacktipH, an online saltwater fishing show whose YouTube channel has over 1,000,000 subscribers, posted their own free video of the clouds from below as they occurred in the last days of January.

‘Has anyone seen clouds like this before? We were fishing at Key West #strange #weather #clouds,” BlacktipH further asked TikTok.

One fan, passing by Edit profilereplied, “I’ve seen enough Alien invasion movies to know exactly what they are.”

Airplanes create rare ‘hole clouds’ at dawn that resemble strange purple UFOs

This incredible photo shows a supernatural-looking sunrise with clusters of purple clouds that resemble UFOs floating in the sky.

The stunning purple-orange display was captured by 50-year-old gardener Adrian Sparrowhawk, who said the sky was an ‘eerie’ sight.

The golden morning light shone through the dark purple clouds that dappled the sky above Tetbury, Gloucestershire, with six clusters of thicker clouds beneath them, like flying objects from a science fiction film.

Adrian said he stopped to photograph the sunset on his way to work at 6.40am on Monday morning because he had ‘never seen anything like it’.

He said: ‘I thought I had to capture it, it was absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked really creepy at that time in the morning.”

He added that he has since been told that the cloud formations are known as ‘perforation clouds’. Also known as a ‘fallstreak hole’, hole clouds are formed when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water, in its supercooled state, is not yet frozen.

Experts say the bizarre shapes are caused by aircraft. They form when part of the cloud layer forms ice crystals large enough to fall into water droplets: water below 0°C but not yet frozen.

These water droplets need a small particle to freeze or cool to below -40 °C. Airplanes piercing through this cloud layer can cause the air to expand and cool as it passes over the aircraft wings or propeller.

This temperature change may be enough to prompt the supercooled droplets to freeze and fall from the cloud layer in this characteristic pattern.

Sometimes the holes in fallstreak formations can expand up to 50 km in diameter within an hour of appearing. When ice particles form quickly, it causes a domino effect as the water droplets connect with the crystals.

These become heavier and then suddenly begin to fall, leaving a large hole in the cloud. The wispy clouds that form in the center of the hole are the falling water particles.

Passing aircraft are believed to be the reason behind the formation of these clouds as a pressure drop caused by their wings or propeller tips quickly cools the air.

Rainbows are sometimes seen with falling clouds, thanks to the light refracted by the water droplets.