‘Holey’ mackerel sky! Dozens of planes punch holes into clouds across the Southeast
By Scott Sistek
COLUMBUS, Ga. — There were some surreal sights in the skies over the Southeastern U.S. Thursday — both from above and below the cloud deck.
Widespread sightings of eerie holes in clouds were reported from Texas across the South and into the Carolinas. While they may look other-worldly, they’re actually just a sign of our nation’s busy aviation system.
The clouds are known as “fallstreak” or “hole punch” clouds and are commonly created when “an airplane flies through super-cooled clouds and disturbs them enough that the precipitate out as ice crystals,” according to meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Portland.
Despite planes taking off and landing thousands of times a day, these clouds are fairly rare to spot and need just the right kind of cloud layer and atmospheric setup to where the clouds will react in this way.
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/fallstreak-hole-punch-clouds-texas-southeast-carolinas
