An odd circular opening in this cirrus cloud over St. Petersburg, Florida was photographed by my friend Maria Ferraro on November 24, 2008.
I’ve always loved clouds. Especially those white cottony cumulus clouds of summer, and the huge, dark, menacing cumulonimbus with their white cirrus anvils.
In my high school library I found a big heavy book with color photos and scientific names for hundreds of types of cloud formations. I studied the book for weeks. Weird for a 15 year old to read a book on clouds I suppose, but I loved it.
I was really happy when my friend Maria Ferraro shared this photo that she took on November 24th, 2008. It looks like a cirrus formation and it has a very unusual circular opening. I think she has submitted it to Fox 13 weatherpix in hopes of having it shown on the late weather forecast, and in hopes of winning an umbrella (that’s the prize for having your photo picked as a winner).
Maria works with photos a lot and helped me create a beautiful book from the historical family photos that my dad had in his collection. You can see her work at www.anelmarcreation.com.
UPDATE: January 17th, 2009:
It seems this phenomenon is referred to as a “punch hole cloud” and may have to do with either jet traffic or warm columns of air rising. Cirrus clouds, I believe, are generally made up of very tiny ice crystals. But sometimes the particles remain “supercooled” water droplets that do not freeze. When a jet passes through the cloud, the particulates from the exhaust mix with the supercooled water droplets and cause them to freeze and fall out, creating the empty hole. That’s one explanation I found at an interesting website with more really neat photos of punch hole clouds and other crazy cloud formations.
