A few weeks ago, Wired magazine online featured a post by Betsy Mason detailing some weird-ass clouds that appear on my home soil here in Australia. The photo (above) was captured by photographer Mick Petroff near the Gulf of Carpenteria. These strange, tubular clouds can grow to be 600 miles long (!!) and move at up to 35 kilometres an hour, causing havoc for aircraft.

 

The clouds are known as “Morning Glory” and appear in autumn over a remote town in Queensland called Burketown. Apparently, some pilots and tourists travel there each year in the hopes of “cloud surfing” (crazy bastards!). Similar clouds appear in other parts of the world (known as “roll clouds”) but no explanation has been forthcoming to explain the phenomenon known as “Morning Glory” – although one witty commenter on the Wired website posited that God may have a cocaine problem.