Rare giant cloud formation in Turkiye spooks netizens

Doha: Massive UFO-like cloud formation spotted over Turkish city of Bursa send social media users into a frenzy.  

The pictures shared showed a strange reddish pink cloud with a hole in the middle that appeared above Bursa on Thursday as the sun was rising.

The cloud, seen from the Kestel, Gürsu, Yıldırım, Osmangazi and Nilüfer districts of Bursa, remained intact for about an hour.

News agencies and social media users all over the world likened the strange cloud  to a UFO due to its bizzare appearance.

Meteorologists identified the cloud as a 'lenticular' cloud that signals turbulence in the atmosphere.

Lenticular clouds often form on top of mountains, and the Turkish town of Bursa lies at the base of a mountain, making the cloud’s appearance more likely.

In December of last year, a similar lenticular cloud appeared over the Andes mountain chain in South America, Washington Post reported.

“As air in the mid-latitude flow rushes across a mountain chain — in this case the Andes — eddies form, like horizontal rotors stretched along the peaks, and eventually can become large-scale standing waves. A similar phenomenon can lead to downstream gravity waves, which tend to line up in packed rows to the lee of a mountain chain,” Washington Post reported.