In July 2025, a video (archived) of an unusual formation in the clouds trended near the top of Reddit, earning more than 24,000 upvotes in the process. The video was of "a rare cloud formation called a fallstreak hole, caused when supercooled water suddenly turns to ice," according to the title of the thread.
An X account with almost 6 million followers shared the same video (archived) that month, as did an Instagram account (archived) with over 500,000 followers.
a rare cloud formation called a fallstreak hole, caused when supercooled water suddenly turns to ice
byu/Obvious_Shoe7302 inDamnthatsinteresting
Through a reverse image search, Snopes found that the video was first posted online by the TikTok account blacktiph, a fishing account with over 4 million followers. The account posted the video (archived) on Jan. 31, 2024, with a caption stating the video was recorded off Key West, Florida. The blacktiph account was unable to identify the clouds at the time and used the video's caption to ask, "Has anyone seen clouds like these before?"
Almost a month later, on Feb. 26, 2024, NASA published an article highlighting its image of the day: a satellite image of a cluster of fallstreak hole clouds near the Florida Keys from Jan. 30, 2024. That aligns with the date the video was first posted, assuming it was recorded the day before, as well as the video's stated location.
"Cavum, also called hole-punch clouds and fallstreak holes, look so odd that people sometimes argue they are signatures of flying saucers or other unidentified anomalous phenomena," NASA wrote. "Seen from below, they can look like a large circle or ellipse has been cut neatly from the clouds, with feathery wisps left in the middle of the hole."
High-level and mid-level clouds, such as cirrocumulus and altocumulus clouds, are often made out of tiny water droplets that are at a temperature near freezing, but have yet to actually freeze, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Supercooling is relatively common high in the atmosphere, and happens when water droplets are exceptionally pure and lack small particles, such as dust, fungal spores, pollen or bacteria, around which ice crystals form, NASA said in its February 2024 article.
When a plane or any other disturbance moves through these clouds, water droplets within the clouds quickly freeze, grow and fall, leaving behind holes in the clouds that grow outward as the surrounding water droplets also freeze. These are the fallstreak hole formations that appear in the video.
The NWS shared several images of fallstreak hole formations from Nov. 1, 2014. Various local media sometimes share videos and photos of clusters of fallstreak holes captured by their audiences. The formations in these images and videos are similar to those seen in the video that was popular on Reddit.
Snopes has previously written about other unusual cloud formations.