Image Credit: Picture: 3AW/Twitter Source: Twitter

Something bizarre recently happened over the skies of the little seaside town of Wonthaggi, Victoria in Australia. The rainbow and the cloud had a fight, and the angry rainbow punched a hole in the cloud. What did the cloud do then? It just cried and cried, and its tears fell down on the ground as snowfall. Little pixies and fairies came flying down.. Did you just believe it? I hope you did not believe all of it. This a fairy tale spun around this natural event that did occur.

But, here is the reality.

The residents of Wonthaggi spotted what seemed like a big hollow in the cloud. At first they got scared and thought that the skies are falling down, and the world is coming to an end. But soon they realized that what they have sighted is a rare phenomenon known as a fall streak cloud or otherwise known as a punch hole cloud. Do you know how clouds get formed? A cloud is a large collection of very tiny droplets of water or ice crystals. However, a fall streak cloud is formed when the water temperature in the cloud is below freezing, but the water has not entirely frozen.

Some of the water in the middle does freeze, but falls down to the surface. Some ice crystals that hang around act like a prism and form a rainbow in the middle.

Hole punch clouds need to be high in the sky for them to form.

A rare sight indeed, but a similar cloud formation was spotted over Perth also last month.