A creepy cloud formation was reportedly photographed today hovering over England and users on the social news Web site Reddit began spreading the picture. User "chriswalkerb," from Yorkshire, England, posted the photograph and asked other Redditors: "Creepy cloud hovering over England can anyone explain?" In return, he received 712 comments and counting. However, no one had an exact answer. "As an air mass blows across a mountain range at perpendicular angle to the range, it creates a standing wave, much like a river running over an underwater rock have standing waves. As the air rises, the temperature decreases and the moisture saturates the air to create the standing lenticular cloud. It gets it shape as a cigar, because air descends rapidly on the other side when it loses temperature again (loss of thermal energy in the formation of droplets). So it re-enforces the strength of the wave, making it exponentially stronger rather than weaker (like in a river). Thus you can often see lenticular clouds in formation, up to tens of miles downwind of the mountain range," replied one verbose user.
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