LIFE Magazine : ...And a High Cloud : May 17, 1963
Date: Friday, March 26 @ 20:50:56 EST
Topic: WMB1
Life
magazine
May 17 1963
p.112
...And a High Cloud
Ring of Mystery
Hovering like a giant's smoke ring, a great cloud appeared at sunset over
Flagstaff, Ariz, last Feb. 28 and set off a continuing scientific mystery.
Watchers struck by the cloud's odd shape and huge size, took pictures, like
these four, at different times and from widely scattered locations in the state.
... more ...
Dr. James McDonald, a meteorologist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics
in Tucson, has been accumulating the pictures. Using them as the basis for
trigonometric calculation, he has made a startling discovery that the cloud
was at least 26 miles high and 30 miles across - "a lot higher and bigger," he
says, "than a cloud should be." The circle was too high to be made by a jet
plane, and so far as Dr. McDonald can determine, there were no rockets,
rocket planes or bombs being tested nearby that day. He hopes anyone else
with pictures will lend them to him, for he would like some more clues about
the cloud 26 miles up - no water droplets exist at that height to make a cloud.
The photographs on the following pages were scanned from p.112 of Life
magazine May 17, 1963.
Click Pictures For Full Scale View
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