According to a UFO blogger, a massive cumulonimbus or thunderstorm cloud photographed from space by British astronaut Tim Peake on board the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit was really a “cloaked UFO,” that is, a stealth alien flying saucer hidden in clouds.
In the folklore of UFO conspiracy theorists, alien races with advanced technology visiting Earth from distant planets employ “cloaking” devices to conceal their presence.
— Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) April 26, 2016
UFO hunters believe that one of the favorite devices that aliens employ to hide their UFO presence from earthlings is a cloud cloak.
When an alien spacecraft hides itself behind a cloud cloak, it is indistinguishable outwardly from what meteorologists term a lenticular cloud formation
But, according to UFO hunters, while lenticular clouds do exist, not all lenticular clouds are weather phenomenon. Some lenticular clouds are actually alien crafts employing the cloud cloaking technique to simulate the appearance of a weather phenomenon so as to deceive unwary humans.
— Jim Loznicka (@LoznickaCBS46) April 26, 2016
And while UFO hunters have offered several suggestions as to why aliens prefer to skulk around in our skies camouflaged to avoid detection, confusion reigns supreme with regard to reliable criteria for distinguishing a genuine lenticular cloud from a cloud-cloaked UFO.
And thanks to the fact that conspiracy theorists do not claim to practice UFOology as an exact science, UFO hunters invent as they go along, the criteria for identifying a “cloud cloaked UFO” pretending to be a lenticular cloud.
The process usually involves a generous infusion of whim and caprice.
The capriciousness inherent to the “science of UFOology” was demonstrated once again when the notorious UFO blogger Scott Waring looked at Astronaut Peake’s latest image from space — a massive cumulonimbus cloud with an anvil and an overshooting top — and concluded based on certain “unusual features” of the massive thunderhead that it was a “cloaked UFO.”
Meteorologists usually observe and study thunderstorms from the ground or from aircraft. But in this case, Astronaut Peake, on board the ISS, offered a rare view of a thunderstorm cloud from low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 250 miles.
— TIEMPO&CLIMA (@TIEMPOCLIMA) April 26, 2016
A cumulonimbus cloud’s flat anvil-like top forms when the cloud, carried by strong upward air currents, reaches an equilibrium level coinciding with the upper part of the troposphere – the lower layer of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The top of the troposphere acts effectively like a ceiling which prevents the cloud from rising higher. When the thunderstorm cloud hits its tropospheric ceiling, it begins to spread horizontally. The horizontal spread of the thunderstorm thus assumes the signature anvil shape.
Sometimes a strong thunderstorm cloud linked with severe weather forms overshooting tops consisting of tufts of cloud rising above the flat anvil top of the cloud. These formations are due to the momentum of the rapid ascent of unusually strong thunderstorm.
Peake’s storm cloud captured from space was unique due to the fact that the momentum of the overshooting top was so great that it burst through the usual tropospheric ceiling and reached into the stratosphere.
Waring was quick to seize upon this unique feature as evidence that what Peake photographed was not an ordinary thunderhead, but a cloud-cloaked alien flying saucer rising to a stratospheric altitude higher than normal thunderheads.
“In other words, this cloud is flying unusually higher than it should be,” Waring writes. “Yeah… because it is [an alien UFO] mothership.”
Thus, in the UFO hunter’s opinion, Tim Peake and meteorologists have committed the error of mistaking a “cloaked UFO” for a cumulonimbus cloud.
“This mothership was caught on camera from the International Space Station as it made a low orbit. They are trying to call it a severe storm, but look closely at its lines,” he lectures.
He points out that the lines forming the edges of the cloud structure were evenly spaced and argues that the feature suggests an artificial structure, a massive alien flying saucer craft hiding inside a “cloud cloak.”
“This cloud has a line all around its edges that are evenly spaced from end to end,” he writes. “There is something hiding inside of a cloud cloak.”
According Waring, the mothership deliberately concealed itself in a “cloud cloak” after it entered the Earth’s atmosphere on its way to the ocean where it will submerge and sink to the bottom of the sea and then enter into an underwater alien base.
“It will of course vanish over the ocean where it will submerge and go on its way to an underwater alien base,” he concluded.
But contrary to Waring’s assertion, meteorologists understand that the overshooting tops of some unusually strong thunderheads do burst through the troposphere into the stratosphere. But this is unusual and typically transient.
And this is not the first time that UFO hunters have declared a flying saucer-shaped cloud a “cloaked alien ship.”
The Inquisitr reported in February that alien and UFO hunters engaged a local meteorologist in a snarky exchange on Twitter after they insisted that a lenticular cloud formation that appeared over Las Vegas, New Mexico, was, in fact, an alien flying saucer manned by Tall White Aliens linked to the U.S. military in popular alien folklore.
The snarky exchange occurred after residents of Las Vegas, New Mexico, were thrown briefly into panic after spotting a lenticular cloud that looked uncannily like a flying saucer hanging very low over the city in a manner reminiscent of scenes from the 1996 Independence Day movie.
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