What was that scary cloud over Atlanta’s Truist Park?
A scary-looking cloud was spotted by many on hand for the Atlanta Braves game at Truist Park in suburban Atlanta on Tuesday night.
But it wasn’t a tornado or even a sign of impending doom for the struggling Braves last night (they lost to the Los Angeles Angels 4-0).
The Braves game had been slightly delayed on Tuesday night by rain, and many fans spotted this in the sky around game time.
The National Weather Service in Atlanta and veteran Alabama meteorologist James Spann both took to X (formerly Twitter) to clear up any confusion:
Atlanta’s Fox 5 news reported getting emails from viewers about the cloud, with several mistaking it for a tornado.
Scud clouds, also called “tornado lookalikes” by the National Weather Service, are not all that uncommon and tend to get a lot of attention when they are spotted.
But they are just imposters.
NOAA defines scud clouds as “small, ragged, low cloud fragments that are unattached to a larger cloud base and often seen with and behind cold fronts and thunderstorm gust fronts. Such clouds generally are associated with cool moist air, such as thunderstorm outflow.”
Another name for scud clouds are fractus clouds, according to the weather service.
The giveaway that a suspicious cloud is scud and not its scarier-looking cousin? A scud cloud will not be rotating like a tornado or funnel cloud does.
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