Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Look...up in the sky...it's a bird...it's a plane...

The sky is always fascinating, it changes it's wardrobe throughout the day from sunrise to sunset.  It can be clear and blue or a hazy gray or even dark, foreboding and threatening.   There can be a scattering of small clouds or an abundance of huge billowy thunderheads.  The photos below were taken just before sunset in the backyard of my Bradenton, Florida home.

Photo above...strange down cloud.  At first I was concerned that it might be a funnel cloud, a harbinger of a tornado, but it didn't have the movement nor the smooth tubular appearance of a funnel cloud.
Photo below...It was a pre-sunset sky and the golds, pinks and lavenders were just making their appearance.

Photo below...another shot of the strange cloud.  Camera set at full zoom (all 3X of it LOL).

Photo below...I wondered if perhaps it was a trail caused by a weather station rocket, though they are usually not so big nor so vertical.

Any ideas as to what you think may have caused this strange cloud ?

10 comments:

  1. Hmm. It definitely looks like it's from some sort of aircraft. Could it have been something launched from Cape Canaveral? I don't know whether you guys see stuff from that far off. It has the look of vapor trail!

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  2. That was the first thing I thought of too, Aly. But these photos are taken looking towards the West, where the sun is setting and Coca Beach is behind me to the East.

    I thought perhaps it could be the trail of a weather station rocket but I've never seen them go up straight like that, since their trajectory is much lower than a NASA rocket or the space shuttle. In So. California we used to see the fluorescent trails of rockets launched by weather stations rather frequently, they were usually trying to see the upper atmospheric wind patterns and the rocket trail would contain some type of fluorescent materials...would look like a tiny aurora borealis.

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  3. Now that's interesting! I was going to suggest some type of rocket or missile but I don't know. May be it's a UFO--not necessarily an alien.

    We get chem-trail over here all the time--they start off small then slowly explode until they are big...but I've never seen anything like this. I'll keep an eye out this way and see if
    anything like it appears!

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  4. I do not have a clue but they sure are pretty :)

    I love taking photos of the sky (well, just about everything these days :)

    Nice photos Anna, I love seeing and reading about life in Florida it seems so far away to me here in Oregon, and so sunny and warm. :)

    Have a wonderful Evening, T. :)

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  5. This looks like some natural phenomena to me. What rocket or anything man made would have that kind of trajectory or leave that kind of trail...but beats me what it is. It is interesting though. Great pictures. I'm an older follower of yours who hasn't posted in a while and thought I poke my head in this evening to say "Hi" and see what you had posted up and got a treat. Thanks.

    Haupi
    Hauplight

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  6. I don't know what it is either but maybe jet plane vapor breaking up? All I know is that the pictures are gorgeous.

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  7. Have to agree with everyone else, the photos are definitely beautiful! Can't really figure out what it could be either, maybe the wind caught a plane's trail just right...??? Never heard of a weather station rocket, wonder if they launch them here too...hmmm, will have to look into that.

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  8. Just a jet trail. It looks like it's going downward but it's moving straight. You need a bigger cloud for a tornado.

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  9. The reason it looks like that is because the jet engines make vapor, which at a certain height will freeze. It's basically a cirrus cloud.

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  10. Andy - thank you for your perspective.
    I wrote this post about 3 years ago and as I look back at the photo I can see the other Jet Vapor trails in the sky - they are quite different than the big one that looks like it goes straight up into the cloud.
    I still tend to think it may have been a weather rocket that Bradenton's local meteorological station shot off to record atmospheric wind patterns.

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