Shocking Cloud Pattern: Random Chance, An Unknown Phenomenon, or the Work of the Devil?

 Today I have gotten several emails from folks seeing an unusual, if not disturbing, cloud pattern in the visible satellite imagery.

I mean odd.

As shown below, you can see the object of concern.....a nearly perfect rectangle in the low clouds (mainly stratus and stratocumulus) due west of Baja California


Here is a closer view.   Wow.


What is particularly odd is that the box seems to nearly remain in place over time.  This is not normal.


We have some international experts on low clouds in the subtropics in my department. In the past, several have talked about human intervention to modify such clouds artificially as a tool to reduce global warming.

They assured me that no such experiment was going on and they could not explain this bizarre appearance.

The Guardian newspaper also emailed about it, asking if this feature is the result of global warming.  I assured them that there was no reason to expect that to be the case.  And Charles Mudede, the self-styled "Green Mussolini"  at the Seattle Stranger, also called, suggesting it was a "Wiccan rectangle."   He also noted that it could be related to "Lucifer's rectangle."    

You have to hand it to the Seattle Stranger staff, they are well informed in matters related to the devil and witchcraft.

The truth is that the cloud rectangle is probably just a random natural phenomenon: with enough time a strange geometric pattern is bound to appear.  

But you never know.....




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