Photographer: Bertrand Kulik
Summery Authors: Bertrand Kulik; Jim Foster
I took this photo of an attention-getting hole punch cloud from the window of my home in Paris France on the morning of October 20, 2023. These clouds (actually a cloudless area) occur when an aircraft traverses a shallow mid-level cloud deck. Supercooled water droplets composing the clouds, when jostled by a commercial jet, for instance, instantly freeze forming myriad ice crystals. The latent heat released by this freezing warms the air and acts to evaporate the clouds near the jet’s entry point through the cloud layer. Often, but not here, a fuzzy fallstreak can be seen when the ice crystals fall through the hole. Photo details: Canon EOS 5D camera; TAMARON SP15-30 mm lens; f 13; 1/50 second exposure; 50 ISO.
Paris, France Coordinates: 48.8566, 2.3522
Related Links:
Hole Punch Clouds and Sundog over Southern England
Bertrand’s Website
