Lenticular clouds look like UFOs

Beautiful shot of lenticular cloud at sunset under orange clouds.

Beautiful shot of lenticular cloud at sunset by Chris Walker in Dayton, Nevada.

Enjoy these photos of beautiful lenticular clouds taken in places around the world, and shared with us by our community at EarthSky Facebook and EarthSky Community Photos.

These lens-shaped clouds typically form where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains. When this happens, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the mountain’s downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. So lenticular clouds can appear and disappear relatively quickly. Plus they’re not familiar to people who live in low-lying or flat terrain. And, just to confound things, lenticular clouds have also been known to form in non-mountainous places, as the result of shear winds created by a front. For all of these reasons, lenticular clouds are often mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs). Enjoy the photos! Thank you to all who posted.

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Two-layer lenticular cloud hovering over stand of trees with grassy field in foreground.

Alba Evangelista Ramos, a Brazilian biologist, captured these rare images of a lenticular cloud from a moving vehicle, near the Haute-Provence Observatory, situated in southeastern France. In this particular case, the “UFO cloud” seems to have been produced by the cold mistral wind that strongly blows over southern France, as it was pushed up the 2,132-foot-high (650-meter-high) plateau of the observatory.

Thick lenticular cloud like a cap on a steep island mountain, sea in foreground.

Jan Whiteman captured this photo at Lord Howe Island, a volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.

Double lenticular cloud connected by a thick round stalk in orange sunset light.

Shared with EarthSky by Jay Lundstrom, who caught this lenticular cloud near Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine.

Lenticular cloud against stormy gray sky.

Sarah Fischer wrote, “I came out of my apartment building, and these were right above my head.”

Thick, double lenticular cloud over silhouette of pointy hill or mountain.

Lenticular cloud over Roque del Conde, on the island of Tenerife, via Roberto Porto.

Lenticular cloud with unusual wavelike top edge against blue sky, roofs in foreground.

“Lenticular cloud outside my window in Dublin, Ireland, this morning. I was surprised to see this as we don’t get them too often here,” said Anthony Lynch Photography.