My grandma saw these one time and cherished her photos and memory of it for years
I was lucky enough to see these a couple years ago, it was very very cool to see in person!
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Never seen clouds like these. Reminded me of Starry Night at first haha.
Are they only in certain regions?
They’re pretty rare, I’ve only seen them one time, and my grandma in northern Ontario only ever saw them once in her 80+ years.
It was such an event in her town that everyone went out to the street to see. When I saw them I also went into the street to take it in, but I didn’t see anyone else enjoying it
Apparently they’re more common in the US plain states (not sure what they include)
Saw them often when I lived in Oklahoma
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"These are recognized as Asperitas clouds."
Not by me. I recognize them as "Look, that shit is so trippy. We might all be dead" clouds.
"Who slipped me acid and what do I owe them" clouds
While I have seen clouds like this (looks like blankets or pillows)
I suspect this is a generated or at the very least AI enhanced photo.
Look at the back of the car, and the lines on the road are not quite correct either. Also it chose to clone the same color car, which could or could not have happened.
Edit: After looking again with less tired eyes, the back of the car is just poorly cloned to hide the plate, probably by “hand”. Something about the road texture still feels filtered (possibly an artificial zoom mentioned below). It could be a really big lens in a nice DSLR, but now that AI has ruined my ability to trust my eyes, I hate that I can’t be sure.
All i see is that the plates on the closest car being removed
Looks like a rubber stamp tool was used to remove the plate. Nothing suggests ai to me.
Yeah, this all looks to me like the AI zoom, which is just terrible, we've sacrificed reality for ... something.
The fact that i don't really know, makes me angrier than just blatant AI posts. There is a higher resulution photo of it, so i assume it's real.
I think this might be real. Higher res version here:
Error 451 It appears you are attempting to access this website from a country outside of the United States, therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
Jesus, even Russian propaganda sites are avaliable world wide. What even is this?
Unavailable outside US, unfortunately.
Makes me want to scream for some reason.
If you paint that on a canvas minus the human Infrastructure I’d Frame it.
You haven't seen me paint
You haven't seen me frame
You haven't seen infrastructure (if you live in __________)
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Why has no one in the comments explained what meteorological phenomena contribute to this?
Good question.
https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/study-explains-science-behind-asperitas-newly-recognised-cloud
Clouds have always appeared in paintings, photographs and pictures, but images captured by amateur photographers confirmed the existence of a dramatic cloud form with a roughened, wavelike base. Citizen science has now helped experts to explain how the newly-recognised ‘wave-like’ asperitas cloud is formed.
In new research, scientists combined infrared satellite images, weather forecasts and laser cloud measurements, taken at the time the rare cloud formations were reported by members of the public, to learn about the weather conditions that create them. Their findings, published in Society's journal Weather, show for the first time that asperitas is a low level cloud made of water – not ice as previously suggested – which develops its characteristic form from atmospheric disturbances, such as weather fronts and storms.
Professor Giles Harrison, who led an international research team including scientists from the University of Reading’s Meteorology department, the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), said: “The sky is often full of clues to weather changes, and asperitas provides distinctive visualisation of complex and turbulent air motions in the lower atmosphere.”
“Reading the sky is a key part of meteorological education, warning aviators and those outdoors of potentially hazardous weather. Asperitas is now a cloud to watch out for too.”
This newly-recognised cloud was officially named asperitas by the World Meteorological Organisation in March, following a 10-year campaign for recognition.
The researchers analysing the cloud for the new study compared sightings with available meteorological data from that time and location to investigate the weather conditions that likely gave rise to the cloud formation. They found that the asperitas formation is likely to be closely associated with atmospheric gravity waves. These are generated along weather fronts and by thunderstorms, where air masses clash and cause vertical motion. This was seen in some of the satellite images analysed by the scientists.
Thank you!
Why haven't you?
Because I'm not a meteorologist and have never incidentally happened to do a deep dive on obscure or rare meteorological phenomena. As I'm sure at least someone here has done.
This is the Lemmy problem on display. We complain about Reddit, but it's popularity is why we have some expert chiming in everywhere. And we all love the tiny community on Lemmy, but we apparently are missing a cloudologist, or maybe just not one in the right time zone.
That's the network effect in a nutshell.
I think mirroring some reddit communities here might attract some of those subject matter experts. The threadiverse is great, but we're missing a lot of niche communities, so it's not ideal for people with very particular special interests or career fields.
An instance with a bunch of clones of various niche subreddits, each with a repost bot to stock the most relevant content, could go a long way to making this a more viable alternative for those types of people
Seems like a missed opportunity on your part.
Life is full of missed opportunities if you want to think about it that way. Every moment is an expanding tree of an infinite number of missed opportunities.
I prefer not to think about it that way. I used to, and it tore me apart and rendered me incapable of ever focusing on any one thing, never able to enjoy anything, never able to relax. It was killing me slowly.
Every moment is a choice. There's a thousand things you can do, but you can only do one of them. No matter what you choose, there's 999 other things that become "missed opportunities".
On the other hand, every moment I choose not to spend doing one thing, is a moment I get to choose to spend doing something else.
Oh my! This would be great when tripping on truffles 😬
I thought they were super rare and expensive, and yet you have so many you're tripping over them?
They're a dime a dozen in EU
Oh wait you mean the mushrooms not the chocolate of the same name
Is out chocolate with mushroom essence or something?
Truffles are a type of hallucinogenic mushroom. I bought some in Amsterdam once. I think they were called philosopher stones.
US and Amsterdam seem to have different truffles. Weirdly, ours are marketed as European....
Are we still talking about the fun kind (fungi) or the little chocolate things?
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Nah, fully just people going "from a distance, it kinda looks like a truffle"
A confection having a center of ganache and an outer coating of powdered cocoa or chocolate, named after the visual resemblance to a Black Truffle
As a child I only ever knew of the chocolate version of truffles and man, having had both...child me was right. Chocolate truffles are the best.
Late 19th century painting.
Why are the telegraph poles pushed into the overgrowth, and why have the horse carriages been abandoned??
Saw some of these about 10 years ago. They're mesmerizing. Had to pull over to get pics and I wasn't the only one. They're trippy af.
For lovers of clouds:
Cloud Appreciation Society
Not by me they aren't don't tell me what to do
I'm going to need a really long spoon.
Pictures don’t do this justice, you need to see these irl they are amazing!
My brain hurts.
Quite cool to look at the pic upside down, too.
This looks like it was painted by Bob Ross
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