"I live in Sevier County Tennessee near a
small community called Chestnut Hill and on 1/4/06 at approx. 8:18am (EST) I
was out on my front porch about to sweep the leaves off when I glanced out
at English Mountain. I noticed a very large oval disc-like silvery-white
object, darker around the bottom and bottom edges, in the sky just above and
south of English Mountain. Immediately it looked strange because you could
tell that it wasn't a cloud because of it's perfect oval disc-like shape.
From the couple of minutes that I was able to observe it there seemed to be
some distinct geometrical patterns associated with it such as squares
running from the far edges reaching inward towards the top of the object.
Something similar to the latitude and longitude lines you'd see on a map.
The object wasn�t moving at first and then approx. 2 minutes or so, maybe
less, the object began rising upward very slow and suddenly shot straight up
and out of sight as if it winked out, simply disappearing. When it shot
straight up it punched thru a thin layer of cloud cover leaving a hole in
the clouds exactly the same shape as the object itself. There also appeared
to be a wisp of smoke or cloud vapor of some sort that seemingly trailed the
object as it broke thru the clouds. English Mountain is directly south of my
home and it appeared that the object was somewhat further south of English
Mountain and not directly over it. From my standpoint I would estimate that
the object was 1 to 2 miles from my location and higher than English
Mountain which is 3600 ft. That would make the object very large in diameter
if I was able to discern the lines and shape from that distance. As soon as
I saw that the object left the hole in the clouds with the smoke trail I
went inside and got my camera and took these photos which were taken within
the first 3 to 5 minutes after the hole was made. The photos are still on my
digital camera and have not been erased."
(From
Wikipedia)
A fallstreak hole (also: hole punch cloud and punch
hole cloud) is a large circular gap that can appear in
cirrocumulus or
altocumulus
clouds. Such holes are formed when the water temperature in the clouds
is below freezing but the water has not frozen yet due to the lack of
ice nucleation particles. When a portion of the water does start to
freeze it will set off a
domino effect, due to the
Bergeron process, causing the water vapor around it to freeze and fall
to the earth as well. This leaves a large, often circular, hole in the
cloud.[1]
It is believed that a disruption in the stability of the cloud layer,
such as that caused by a passing jet, may induce the domino process of
evaporation which creates the hole. Such clouds are not unique to one
geographic area and have been photographed from the United States to
Russia.[2]
References
-
The cloud appreciation society
-
Meteorology News: Description and Photographs of Hole Clouds
