S'COOL: New Findings about Clouds
This photo on the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website shows what is being called a "hole-punch" cloud
on January 12, 2004 over Mobile, AL, USA. Recently, I (S'COOL director Lin Chambers) met a Middle
School teacher from Mobile whose students spotted and photographed this cloud. If you follow the links
on the APOD site you will see a few other reports of these kinds of clouds.
These clouds have also been spotted recently in some satellite imagery, as reported by colleagues at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Scott Bachmeier in particular). A
November 2003 event appears
to be the result of an aircraft dissipation trail (distrail) - where water vapor in the exhaust of a plane initiates the
formation of ice crystals which then absorb the water droplets in the atmosphere and create the hole.
A
January 2004 event in the Chicago area is much less clear in origin.
|
