The images were repeatedly shared on Facebook by users who did the same claimed they showed “chemtrails”.
One person called it ‘insane chemtrailing’, while another claimed the ‘chemicals’ would affect ‘water, soil and food’.
“Shoot them out of the sky,” one user suggested.
The images were posted on the same day that similar photos flooded social media.
Australian news outlet news.com.au included similar images in an article stating that the “rare cylindrical cloud formation” had amazed and bewildered residents of NSW (archived link).
But experts say there is no evidence to support the “chemtrails” conspiracy (archived link). AFP has also previously debunked claims about chemtrails here and here.
‘No chemtrails’
“These are not chemtrails, they are rolling clouds,” Professor Jason Middleton, an aviation meteorology expert at the University of New South Wales, told AFP on June 11, 2024.
Middleton looked at the photos shared in the fake post and confirmed that they showed some sort of volutus cloud at allaltitude under rare circumstances.
He added that the westerly wind on June 4 was “conducive to generating roll clouds to the east.”
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology also posted about the rare weather phenomenon on its verified Facebook page on June 4 (archived link).
The agency said the clouds appeared to have developed “due to a combination of higher-level temperature inversion and wind speed shear.”
It explained that a temperature inversion occurs when atmospheric conditions cause the air higher up in the atmosphere to become warmer.
Under these conditions, the air that rises to form clouds will be cooler than the air around it and begin to sink, leading to flat clouds. These take on a ‘rolling appearance’ due to changes in wind speed or direction over short distances, pushing the top of the cloud faster than the bottom.
