From clouds that prompt UFO sightings to mysterious shapes beneath the ice, Canada’s spectacular natural environment has its fair share of spooky scenes. We take a look at the best of Canada’s spooky weather below.
CLOUD OR UFO?
Some of the strangest clouds nature has to offer are frequent visitors to parts of the West. Lenticular clouds, with their distinctive “flying saucer” shape, form when humid air flows over an obstruction – like the mountains, which feature prominently in western Canada’s topography.
Lenticular clouds over Nile Creek Beach, Bowser, British Columbia. Image courtesy Duane Harding, September 4, 2016.
SEE ALSO: An amazing UFO-like cloud hovers over the rugged peaks of Patagonia
SPOOKY BIG STORM
A little further east, the vast prairie skies are often home to spooky clouds of a different nature. Massive thunderstorm cells form over Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba each year when the Rocky Mountains channel dry cloud clouds down to collide with humid, hot air from the US plains. The result is explosive storms that can produce massive hail, torrential downpours, and even tornadoes.
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The storm featured in the video above, captured on camera by Kyle Brittain, former reporter for The Weather Network’s Alberta bureau, shows how large a single storm cell can be as it darkens the sky overhead. The backlighting from the sun also helps show the texture of the violent storm in fine detail.
HAS ANYONE BITED INTO THESE CLOUDS?
While it may seem like someone has been snacking on the sky, fallstreak holes, also known as skypunches or hole-punch clouds, form thanks to water and ice processes occurring at cloud level.
Fallstreak loch clouds hover over Stouffville, Ontario. Image courtesy of Tim Gain, February 17, 2017.
Fallstreak holes are the result of the rapid freezing of supercooled water droplets. As soon as ice crystals begin to form in part of the cloud, the effect spreads and neighboring water droplets evaporate, “eating” part of the cloud cover and leaving a hole.
GHOSTS ALSO LIKE TO BUILD SNOWMEN
From tiny snowballs to giant snow tumbleweeds, snow tumbles might look like they’re about to get a spooky helping hand, but it’s a combination of natural factors at work.
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When a thin, damp layer of snow falls on a packed or icy layer, this surface snow can easily be blown about by the wind. When the wind is strong enough to shake a lump of wet snow but weak enough not to tear it apart, these self-propelled snowballs can sometimes emerge. Another invisible force – gravity – can also help snow rollers.
STRANGE VISIONS UNDER THE ICE
And finally, this disturbing scene from Halifax, like a school of mysterious figures swimming swiftly downstream, isn’t as supernatural as it seems.
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These are actually air bubbles that slide with the water flowing under the ice. The first half of February 2019 was mild in Halifax, but falling temperatures in the second half of the month would have allowed the return of thin layers of ice on free-flowing streams and streams, leading to such footage.
WATCH: A UFO-like cloud is hanging over Niagara, that’s it
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on October 28, 2019.
