Think you saw a UFO? Sorry, but it may have only been these wildly cool clouds
Sorry, but it’s not a UFO cover-up.
Some alien hunters and extraterrestrial enthusiasts will be disappointed to learn that the unidentified flying object they have seen is nothing more than a unique type of cloud shaped like a flying saucer.
These one-of-a-kind Lenticular clouds have fooled the best of ’em over the years — including an airborne pilot who saw the disk-shaped object by Mount Rainier of Washington in 1947. Months before the infamous Roswell incident later that year, the sighting from Kenneth A. Arnold — the U.S. Air Force confirmed it was a cloud — even coined the term “flying saucer” for the first time.
Earlier this year, they turned heads in El Paso, Texas, too, while also putting on a “stunning” display early last year over California’s Mount Shasta, as well as mimicking a UFO in far-away Bursa, Turkey, Fox Weather reported.
The Lenticular clouds suspiciously stick out because they hardly move across the sky and only minutely change shape over time, according to weather experts.
Along with the mountains of Washington state, they commonly appear south in California and also over Japan’s Mount Fuji, according to the outlet.
Last year, the UFO-looking clouds were spotted over the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. On the East Coast, Lenticulars formed over Mount Washington in New Hampshire earlier in the year as well.
The clouds typically stay around mountainous terrain because they “form in the crests of gravity waves created by relatively stable, fast-moving air,” according to the Mount Washington Observatory.
Specifically, this occurs commonly when air is “forced up and over a mountain-oriented perpendicular to the wind direction.”
Weather gurus note that the Lenticular clouds do not tend to cause any sort of weather phenomenon and described them to be “gentle giants.”
However, pilots may experience turbulence flying through them.
