What was that strange cloud in the Bridgewater area?
BRIDGEWATER – When people looked up Sunday evening they saw something they weren’t expecting.
It wasn’t a bird and it wasn’t a plane, it was a cloud... a very unusual cloud.
The cloud looked as if a portion of it had caved in and a long tail, attached to it, was flowing towards the ground, similar to a tornado.
People, on Facebook, said they spotted the cloud around 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 26, in the Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, West Bridgewater and Middleboro area.
And while there were lots of theories from locals about what exactly the sight was of, The Enterprise contacted the National Weather Service, to get an expert opinion on the strange cloud.
“It looks like a contrail with the sun catching it in a weird way,” Lenore Correia, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, said.
“It is very common,” Correia said. “Contrails are those streaks you see in the sky left behind by an airplane.”
Although contrails are typically seen as horizontal, Correia said, this one may look vertical due to the way the sun was hitting it.
That wasn’t the only theory about the strange cloud though.
Sarah Wroblewski, a meteorologist for Boston 25 News, said it could be a “hole punch cloud” also known as a fallstreak hole, according to an article by the news outlet.
A fallstreak hole is a large circular gap that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds, according to the NWS. Often these unusual clouds have “supercooled” water droplets.
They, often times, are formed when a plane “punches” through the cloud, causing the heavier ice crystals to fall to the ground.
What is left behind is a gaping hole in the cloud.
However, Wroblewski told Boston 25 News, that she had never seen a “hole punch cloud” with a tail as long as the one pictured.
But no matter what it was, the cloud certainly has people talking and wondering.
People posted pictures of various views of the cloud Sunday evening on Facebook pages.
“Wow”, “Awesome”, “So cool” and “Wish I saw it,” many people commented on the photos.
Sara Cline may be reached at scline@enterprisenews.com.
