Hole Punch Cloud Mistaken For Wormhole, Internet Chaos Ensues

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an inter-dimensional portal opened by the HAARP machine!…?
Well, don’t pack your bags just yet, everybody. Turns out this peculiar phenomenon in the sky isn’t a glitch in the Matrix, nor is it a hole accidentally torn in the facade of the Truman Show-like stage we call Planet Earth.
It’s a cloud.


A hole punch cloud, also called a fallstreak hole, is basically a gap that appears in certain clouds when super-cooled water doesn’t freeze, and droplets evaporate around ice crystals. They may initially be caused by passing aircraft.
This particular hole punch cloud appeared in Stockton, California, and when the image was shared on social media on Friday, May 9, you can imagine the wild theories that followed.
An alien invasion? A portal? Could it be an angel? posits one late-night radio talk show host (I assume). And, of course, the possibility of weather manipulation by the soon-defunct HAARP.
Anyway, here’s another unrelated image of a weird cloud over the A1 motorway. It made the sky look like it was wrinkled:

Clouds do strange things. If you ask me, that non-wormhole in Norway was much more exciting.