Check Out These Weird Hole-Punch Clouds Over Florida That NASA Just Found

Amaze Lab

NASA’s Terra satellite was looking to document the effects of climate change on our planet’s atmosphere. Instead it captured photos of a strange phenomenon in the skies over Florida.

Transcript

00:00This is a photo taken from space, captured by NASA's Terra satellite.

00:08It's looking at the effects of climate change, specifically its impacts on our planet's

00:13atmosphere.

00:14What you're seeing here is the southern tip of Florida.

00:16However, there's a strange phenomenon hidden within this picture right here.

00:20These are what are often referred to as hole-punch clouds, or what scientists call cavum clouds,

00:25because they look like a hole was literally punched straight into the sky.

00:29They were first documented in the 1940s.

00:31But how and why they form was only discovered this century.

00:34And it turns out they're man-made.

00:36The whole phenomenon begins when an airplane moves through mid-level alto cumulus clouds.

00:41These types of clouds consist of supercooled moisture droplets.

00:44And when an aircraft bursts through one of them, it creates a cavum that grows and grows,

00:48like this.

00:49Studies have found that the shallower the angle of the aircraft, the larger the cavum cloud

00:53hole.

00:54So no extraterrestrials, unfortunately.

00:56Something they have often been mistaken for before.

00:58These cavum clouds were captured just off the west coast of the Sunshine State, near the

01:02Miami International Airport, where more than a thousand flights take off every day.

01:07Every day.

01:08Every day.

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