Traveler Captures Video of Mysterious Holes in the Sky — And No, They’re Not ‘Flying Saucers’
In January 2024, some travelers came across a sighting that left them gobsmacked with suspicion. Someone, most likely a celestial bookbinder, was plotting a strange scheme by punching holes in the sky as if it were their piece of paper. In a scene that seemed to have popped straight from a creepy science fiction movie, the traveler, who goes by the moniker @BlacktipH on X, shared footage of these mysterious “holes” punched into the sky off Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. “I’ve never seen clouds like this before,” the videographer wrote in the post caption.
The video starts with a scene recorded from a shoreline, with the camera panning to show a close-up view of the sky above. The sky appears to be cloudy. But as the camera zooms into the sky, the filmmaker interjects, “What’s going on? What’s that?” A closer look reveals that there are giant holes punctured into the fluffy white blanket of clouds, resembling part of a cake whose frosting has been lopped off from the middle portion. With a seemingly endless blue stretch of water rippling and churning below, the videomaker then shifts the camera to show another segment of the sky.
“Look over there. There’s a circle. That’s an actual cloud,” a voice exclaims in the background while a hand points towards a gigantic hole punched into the cloudy cream of the bright skies above. The sighting left viewers nonplussed, although many of them were unsurprised, saying that they had viewed it before. “I’ve seen this before too, I’m guessing it has to do with the water below,” commented a viewer, @MattyImports, and shared some images of a similar sky, sunset orange with ash-colored holes.
For many viewers, the video became a prompt to concoct bizarre stories, like rare UFO sightings and mystical celestial portals. According to @burnkarma, the strange holes looked like “spaceships with cloaking devices.” Dozens of viewers, including @blastncast_jones and @mdeybssankar, said the holes were skewered by “aliens.” From @CustomerDecency’s perspective, the holes look like "it could fit in a Y2K-themed video game." @wonderofscience, who reposted the video, dismantled the stories, sharing that there’s a scientific name to this phenomenon. “Fallstreak holes,” they described it in the caption. They’re correct in saying that. NASA Earth Observatory once spotted the same phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. These “fallstreak clouds” are also known by names like “hole-punch clouds” and “cavum,” the Latin word for “cavity.”
The mystery of how these holes are actually punched into the cloudy froth of the sky lies in a scientific process called “supercooling.” Supercooling is provoked when the water droplets are “exceptionally pure” without traces of any impurities like dust, pollen, or bacteria. These droplets “refuse to freeze” until a catalyst shows up and triggers a chain reaction. This catalyst, in most cases, is an airplane. When an airplane zips through the layer of altocumulus clouds, it acts in the same way as a barber’s razor, making the supercooled droplets freeze. Then, the shavings of these ice crystals start dropping down from the clouded pudding, leaving a void which appears as perforated holes to the viewer standing on the land.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, described these holes as made by someone who has taken “an enormous cookie cutter and cut out an enormous hole out of a layer of clouds.” So as it turns out, the suspect behind these holes in Mexico’s skies wasn’t a celestial bookbinder with a punching machine in his hand. It was just a drama played out by the bouncing wings of what humans call one of their greatest inventions.
You can watch the video here.
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