iStockphoto / Mindful Snap
Fishermen off Key West, Florida looking up at the sky might’ve thought they were seeing the early stages of an alien invasion due to the rare hole punch clouds in the sky.
Josh Jorgensen from BlacktipH Fishing, one of the most popular fishing YouTube channels around, shared this clip from Key West, Florida and at first glance his followers were like ‘yup, those are aliens.’ After comments from crackpots, someone pointed out they were rare punch hole clouds, better known as fallstreak holes, which are created when supercooled water evaporates and leaves a large circular gap behind.
I’ve never seen clouds like this before. Does anyone know how these forms? We saw these in the Gulf of Mexico off Key West. pic.twitter.com/iFVQwzYVEq
— BlacktipH (@BlacktipH) January 31, 2024
Who better to explain what Fallstreak Holes aka Hole Punch Clouds are than a website named ‘Cloud Appreciation Society’ who wrote an article about these rare clouds back in 2011, shortly after a recent study into the phenomenon had been published in Science Magazine.
That article states “for the hole to form, the droplets in the cloud layer need to be ‘supercooled’. This means that they are at a temperature below 0˚ Celsius, but have yet to frozen.” The 2011 research confirmed that aircraft play a role in the formation of these clouds with “expansion of the air as it passes over the aircraft wings and (for certain types of plane) over the blades of its propellers” causing the cooling which leads to the formation.
Here is another look at these rare clouds:
It has been quite cold here in Florida over the past week. While January ended 1-degree warmer than the historical average it seemed amiss to Floridians who felt like the first month of the year was particularly cold.
That’s because while the afternoon temperatures were cooler than Januarys past the actual ‘low’ temperatures overnight and in the early mornings in Florida were much higher than the historical averages. All of that is to say Florida has had some particularly cold weather recently which triggered this rare cloud formation off Key West seen by BlacktipH.