Location Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012
It’s a UFO!!! RUN!!!
No, wait, that’s a lenticular cloud. Sorry, false alarm.
…I guess that would make it an IFC then. An Identified Floating Cloud.
This particular IFC isn’t that UFO-like anyway. There’s far more fantastic ones you can find floating over sharp mountain peaks. This particular mountain has a flat top, which doesn’t work so well for forming clear edges on its lenticulars.
So, what do mountains and flying saucer shaped clouds have to do with each other, you ask? Well, as air currents pass over mountain ranges, there’s all this rock in the way, so the air gets shoved upwards, into thinner and colder sections of the atmosphere. This changes the delicate balance that is air humidity and well, the water kinda falls out of the sky. This is what causes the rain shadow effect as well, forming lots of rain clouds on the windward side of the mountains.
But sometimes there’s not enough moisture in the air to form clouds all over. At those times, only the spots where the air gets shoved upwards the most have the moisture squeezed out of them, forming these odd-shaped clouds. They’re centered right above mountain peaks, and are a type of standing cloud. In other words, the cloud doesn’t move with the wind. What’s really happening is that it’s a constantly forming and dissolving cloud. The air coming in forms new cloudy bits when it gets shoved high enough, and the cloudy bits fade away when the air starts heading down the other side of the mountain.
Which, since it’s too far away to see that constant internal motion, still manages to look like a cloud that’s ignoring the weather going on around it, aka acting “unnaturally”. In other words, the perfect disguise for a saucer-shaped UFO that’s doing longer-term observation of the area! It’s so clear now! The meteorologists are trying to convince us the UFOs aren’t UFOs!!
Or not.
