Space invader: The flying saucer-shaped cloud that was photographed at the weekend by Brian Wilton Posted on 06/24/2010 3:18:56 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Close encounter of the cloudy kind: How menacing sights in the sky turned out to be meteorological marvels
By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 11:37 AM on 23rd June 2010
Looking to the skies, you'd be forgiven for thinking that something worrying was afoot.
Surely that's a massive UFO hovering menacingly over the rooftops above?
And isn't that an atomic mushroom cloud filling the horizon in the picture below?
Space invader: The flying saucer-shaped cloud that was photographed at the weekend by Brian Wilton
Well, no. They're clouds - but they were realistic enough to make those who spotted them do a double take.
The 'flying saucer' was photographed over Crieff in Perthshire at the weekend by Brian Wilton and his wife Isobel.
'We couldn't believe it,' said Mr Wilson. 'It was like the scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the spaceship comes down.'
Mr Wilton believes the cloud was an altocumulus lenticularis - an almond-shaped or lens-shaped mass of cloud that appears dense but quickly evaporates.
The cloud had been given an eerie quality by the light of the setting sun.
The mushroom cloud was photographed off the Greek island of Mykonos.
Looking startlingly like the results of the nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific in the 1940s and 1950s, it was actually a stunning example of a cumulonimbus incus.
They form when warm moist air rises into cooler air and condenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Ping
Lenticular cloud.
In northern Virginia, we get line after line of them forming on the East side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
That looks mighty like a cloud.
PING
How come nobunny pinged you ?
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Things that go hmmmmmmmm in the night . . .
will check it out.
Thx.
Probably in this case, they already knew that’s of little interest to me.
The authentic UFO cases are so plentiful . . . I have absolutely no time or interest in the other nonsensical stuff.
You don’t like purty pictures ?
“In northern Virginia, we get line after line of them forming on the East side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
Yeah, we get them over the Rockies here in Colorado. Dangerous flying conditions.
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