Bizarre 'UFO cloud' keeps showing up exactly in the same spot for over 100 years

For the past several decades, UFO sightings have been reported from different parts of the world, and while some have explanations, others remain a mystery. They have been depicted as either flying saucers or massive spaceships on the silver screen. In a scene right out of a science fiction movie, a saucer-shaped cloud was spotted in the sky above New Zealand in a region used to such sightings. Residents of the towns Middlemarch and Hyde in the Otago region of NZ are acquainted with this ‘UFO cloud’ that has been appearing in the same place repeatedly for over 100 years.

It just hovers above the land, floats in the spot for a while, before it eventually dissolves in the sky. Whether it is just a friendly visitor or an eerie extra-terrestrial entity is something no one knows yet. But perhaps science has a term for this, as reported by Live Science. Familiar with the frequent appearance of this cloud, the residents have named it "Taieri pet." According to The Sun, this “pet cloud” was last spotted in 2020 by Air New Zealand First Officer Geoff Beckett, who was on the flight deck of an aircraft flying to Dunedin, a city on the South Island. "I’ve been flying for 20 years now and I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s the best example I’ve ever seen," Beckett told the Otago Daily Times at that time, and added, "The scale of it was huge. It just kept going up and up and up.” He mentioned that the image made him think of a “massive alien mothership.”

The latest sighting of the cloud on September 7, 2024, was captured in an image by NASA’s satellite OLI (Operational Land Imager). The cloud in the image is about 7 miles long but isn't exactly a UFO. As it turns out, the scientific name for such stubborn clouds is altocumulus standing lenticular cloud (ASLC). Also called a “lenticular cloud,” it's usually formed when high-speed winds encounter a topographic barrier such as a mountain range, as per NASA’s Earth Observatory.

After encountering the mountains, the gust of wind is forced to flow upwards and over the mountains, and this forms a wave in the sky. Air cools at the crest of this wave and the water vapor condenses into clouds. In the case of Taieri Pet, winds from the northwest drool over the steep Rock and Pillar Range, where perpendicular winds shape the pet cloud. Once the cloud is formed, it remains stationary for a while. Observers of these clouds have often described them as “huge stack of pancakes” or “piles of plates.”

These clouds are notoriously dangerous due to their height and strong winds that can pose risks for airplanes passing by. FOX Weather reports that the appearance of these “pet clouds” is an indication that there are extreme weather conditions in the atmosphere, which could soon trigger a variety of climatic conditions.