This is an interesting little factoid and the Belly Achers reckon we can all go home early, because we learned something new (that’s one of Issac Newton’s unpublished laws – if you learn something new you get to go home early).
According to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society – and you thought we were just a bunch of comic book readers – when conditions are just right, a jet or turboprop airplane travelling through a cloud can cause it to snow! Airplanes that penetrate altocumulus clouds containing supercooled droplets of water can cause some of the moisture to freeze and fall to the ground, leaving holes or channels in the clouds. As air is forced over the wings or the tips of propellers, its temperature falls, causing the droplets to form. The Pacific Northwest in the US and Canada and western Europe often experience weather systems that are susceptible to this kind of event, according to the study. Andrew Heymsfield, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and lead author of the study happened upon the results while flying in a research aircraft where he observed the formation of a hole and a burst of snow. But fear not, the effect is not common enough to have significant climactic impact, Heymsfield said. Phew, that’s all the industry needs, is one more environmental headache. Too bad these clouds can’t produced money when aircraft fly through them.