The Wisdom of Clouds
Jacob Wrich
Since before spoken language, mankind has found meaning within perception. The brain necessarily searches for patterns in even the most mundane observations. Projections, made famous by the work of Hermann Rorschach and subsequent Jungian interpretations, utilize exterior images as a medium to reveal subtle aspects of the psyche and subconscious often inaccessible through standard therapies. For the purposes of this paper, we will use the medium that has been available to mankind since the beginning of time: clouds formations. As spurred by the video, “Mamma and Baby Whale Clouds,” I will examine the authenticity of interpretive cloud formations through the science of nephology as well as the process of pareidolia, the tendency to perceive known images in the random visual stimulus of clouds. As preceding research has tended to segregate the science of cloud formation and the psychology of visual interpretation, I will attempt to examine them in concurrence and within the broader context of significant historical moments.
1. Initial Hypothesis: The video recorded in Kauai, Hawaii which appears to show clouds transforming into two whales swimming through the sky, and which later became viral under the name, “Momma and Baby Whale Clouds,” is a hoax.
a. Description: The video, confirmed to have been recorded on an iPhone 6, though dubious, at first glance appears authentic. The video opens on two pairs of bare feet in the sand. A light brown dress waves in the breeze. Static sound of waves drumming on the shore. A young girl’s small laugh. Minute 0:06, the camera abruptly angles up to a blue sky with two large cumulus nimbus clouds. At minute 0:13 a young girl speaks, “Mommy, make them do it again.” Her mother replies, “I can’t, Baby.” Then in a quieter voice (to herself?), “Did that really happen?” Minute 0:22-0:30, nothing happens. Continued waves crashing. Two clouds hang in the blue sky. Minute 0:31, the camera drops back to the expanse of ocean. Minute 0:36, the girl yells, “Mommy, look!” The camera lifts again to the sky. The two cumulous clouds appear to form into the shapes of a large whale and a smaller whale. The formation appears to have begun just prior to minute 0:36 with the representations completed at minute 0:43. The shapes are unmistakably whales. Minute 0:51, the images start swimming through the sky, quickly, naturally for whales, as though they’re mirroring some image from the ocean below them. The shape, angles and rapidity of movement is distinctly abnormal for clouds. The “whale clouds” continue their swim through the sky for approximately fifteen seconds (minute 0:51-1:06), before the images slowly lose distinction and morph back into cottony masses suspended in the blue sky. Minute 1:15, the video ends.
b. Evidence that the “whale clouds” video is a hoax:
i. Based on the retroactive study of jet stream patterns, which can be established with 98.4% accuracy using doppler radar, automated surface-observing systems and processed through NOAA’s Advanced Weather Processing Systems (AWIPS), it is clear that the movements of the cumulous clouds on the date and time the video was recorded—October 12, 2022, approx. 6:12 p.m. HST (Hawaiian Standard Time)—violate the basic principles of physics and thermodynamics. In fact, the clouds do not follow any standard known pattern of air currents, even adjusting for sudden shifts in atmospheric pressure or tropospheric anomalies. Simply stated: There is no scientific explanation for this video to be authentic.
c. Evidence that the whale clouds video is authentic:
i. Dr. Lorraine Nestra and Dr. Declan Moriarty, adjunct professors at the University of California’s film editing department, through the process of image forensics, have found no evidence of video editing techniques being applied to the whale clouds video. Both noted no artifacts of the bastardization of the digital code, nor did they observe any blurring of images even under extreme magnification. Furthermore, they noted that shadow, object angularity and fluidity of movement (particularly that of waves and sunrays) are consistent with natural expected patterns with the sole exception of the whale clouds. Separately, the woman who is alleged to have filmed the whale clouds, Hawaiian native, Kailani Nani, has received no formal training in Photoshop, Affinity Photo or Procreate or any other technology that could potentially be used to execute a deepfake video. Nor does she have any motivation to do so.
d. Conclusion: Inconclusive. Despite no evidence of fabrication, without a scientific explanation to support the visual of clouds forming into whales swimming through the sky, the video cannot be fully authenticated.
2. Secondary Hypothesis: If the whale cloud video is real, these cloud movements are not anomalous. Therefore, other instances of analogous cloud behavior exist and have been witnessed.
a. Evidence: Though countless individuals throughout history have noted shapes resembling familiar objects in the clouds, these have often been dismissed as mere projections, or in the very least, coincidental shapings that appear to represent recognizable objects. With such a vast historical dataset, it is worthwhile to segregate specific instances or times in which, through corollary recognitions of cumulous nimbus cloud identifications, patterns emerge with which one can begin to accrue meaningful datum. For the purpose of the exploration of this hypothesis, the data set will include the date of September 11, 2001, beginning at 8:46 a.m. EST—the time of the initial impact by United Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center building—through 7:30 p.m. EST—the approximate time of sunset in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and focus particularly on three credible reports of individuals witnessing clouds in the image of airplanes crashing into buildings.
b. On September 11, 2001, following the attack on the World Trade Center, NOAA received thirty-one reports of clouds alleged to be shaped like planes crashing into skyscrapers, all from along the Atlantic coastline north of New York City and south of Halifax. The following day, there were twelve more from ship captains in the waters of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. On September 13, there were none. Most reports included a building on fire with small drops of clouds around it, shaped like people plummeting from windows. This phenomenon, though it may seem out of the ordinary, is not necessarily alarming especially considering that the media coverage of the terrorist attacks was around the clock and world-wide. Individuals, especially in distress, are often more susceptible to projecting internal fears onto external representations. In this way, cumulous nimbus clouds can be seen as a sort of Rorschach test in the sky, a way to distinguish the relationship of inner thoughts and the external world. Of particular interest on September 11, 2001 was the time and location of the reports. The weather was sunny with a few scattered clouds over New York City. According to weather tracking data, a jet stream flowing up the Canadian East Coast pulled the clouds north-northeast. The sightings of the clouds in the shapes of the atrocity were along the same jet stream that the clouds would have moved, and the timing in those locations put the airmass that held the clouds leaving New York on the jet stream, at the specific locations of the sightings.
i. Report One: Narragansett, Rhode Island, 11:54 a.m. Gregory Allen, a local resident and businessman, called NOAA and reported seeing from his balcony, “Two big, white clouds. One shaped like a plane and the other shaped like the World Trade Center. They floated naturally through the sky. At first, I thought I was seeing things. Then the plane-shaped cloud moved suddenly and crashed into the building. The clouds puffed up like an explosion. Then they were just two lumps of normal-looking clouds and they floated away.”
ii. Report Two: White Mountain National Forest, New Hampshire. Regina Gaye, a student at White Mountains Community College in Berlin, New Hampshire reported that she had driven down that morning with the goal of hiking on Mt. Adams. By mid-afternoon, she had stopped to have a sandwich and some trail mix near a scenic overlook. Regina approximates the time at 3:30 p.m. While eating, she noticed two tall, rectangular clouds floating above the tree line. She found the harsh geometry of the clouds unsettling. Then another cloud seemed to appear from nowhere. This one shaped like an airplane with the same stark geometric properties. She said, “As though it was drawn in the sky.” And the airplane cloud crashed into the buildings, and they all disappeared. When she returned home near sunset, she informed her roommate about what she had seen. Her roommate turned on the television. This, Regina claims, is when she learned about the tragic events of that day.
iii. Report Three: Halifax, Nova Scotia just before sunset at approximately 7:28 p.m. EST Alain Laurent, a pediatrician and a competitive track cyclist, stood in his driveway repairing a tire on his bicycle when, he stated, “In the distance over the ocean, I saw what I at first thought was a flock of large, white birds. My wife enjoys birding, and I knew she kept a pair of binoculars in the garage, so I found them and looked closer. I could see that they were not birds at all, but small chunks of clouds. But they were moving quickly and coming together to form one larger cloud. Once they came together, I didn’t need the binoculars to see that they had formed an enormous column. It became clear to me that the column was actually a building. Another cloud formed what appeared to look like a bird at first. It was smaller than the building. I used the binoculars again and saw that it looked more like an airplane. The airplane cloud took off toward the building cloud and all the clouds spread out. With the sunset behind them, the clouds appeared to be on fire.”
c. Conclusion: While again, no scientific evidence can confirm the cloud formation and movements from the reports, the correlation is remarkable. Three separate people, each appearing psychologically stable, claimed to have witnessed very similar abnormal cloud behavior on the same day. Even more remarkable, the timelines follow the jet stream pattern up the east coast from New York City to Halifax with astonishing accuracy. Results: again inconclusive.
3. Tertiary Hypothesis: Cloud formation occurrences not only reflect the present (example: whale clouds of Kauai, Hawaii) and the past (example: airplane and building clouds of September 11, 2001, northeast coast from New York City to Halifax, Nova Scotia), but in some instances clouds have predicted future events.
a. Evidence: Brigadier General Paul Warfield Tibbetts Jr., captain of the Enola Gay, B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb known as Little Boy on the city of Hiroshima, Japan near the end of World War II, was overheard by a hospice nurse just days before his death on November 1, 2007, telling his grandson, Paul W. Tibbets IV, that on August 6, 1945, the day he flew the bomb across the Pacific Ocean, he was above the clouds. He stated, “There was a thick carpet of clouds beneath us. Ahead, the sunshine was full. We were still an hour away from our mission’s destination, when up ahead, we saw a formation of clouds shooting up like a giant mushroom. The sun painted it in these dark reds and yellows. After the mission, I returned and saw television footage of the mushroom cloud above Hiroshima and I realized that the cloud I saw in the sky an hour before dropping the bomb was identical.” Granting the intense psychological pressure of General Tibbets’s mission as well as the fact that he had suffered multiple strokes prior to this confession, this revelation is easily dismissed, but within the larger framework of cloud research, perhaps it was a warning. Though this story provides context, for the purpose of this hypothesis, I will examine two natural disasters and the foreshadowing by clouds of their occurrences.
i. Natural Disaster 1: June 14, 1991, a commercial flight left Hong Kong International Airport enroute to Denpasar International Airport, Bali, Indonesia. While flying above the South China Sea, about 150 kilometers northwest of Manilla, both pilot Jun Lai and his co-pilot Wen Chin, claim to have witnessed a mountain of clouds in the sky. At first, they stated that it seemed like a strange cloud formation and paid it little mind. But, Jun Lai stated (and this account was confirmed by Wen Chin), “The mountain of clouds burst forth with clouds appearing to pour out the top and spread upward and outward with abnormal rapidity.” They found this cloud behavior remarkable and told their wives; however, they didn’t think much more about what they had witnessed until the following day when news broke of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The media images of the eruption, the men claim, captured with almost exact specificity, the image they had seen in the clouds the day prior.
ii. Natural Disaster 2: March 9, 2011, a cargo flight filled with medical equipment left San Francisco, California enroute to Taipei, Taiwan. At approximately 2:45 p.m. JPN (Japan Standard Time), the cargo plane was approximately 300 meters above the cloud ceiling, flying over the Pacific Ocean approximately seventy-five kilometers off the northeastern coast of Japan, when Captain Louise Shultz spotted an oddity in the clouds. She noticed what appeared to be a cresting wave moving rapidly across the layer of clouds. She estimated it to have been between forty to sixty feet (12-18 meters) high and moving at a speed as fast as an airplane, approximately 500 miles per hour (800 kilometers). Captain Shultz added that it “rolled across the clouds and crashed into another cloud and disappeared.” Two days later, on March 11, 2011, the world witnessed Japan pummeled by a forty-foot wave caused by an underwater megathrust earthquake.
iii. Example 3 (pending): Following my communications with ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association) and their subsequent outreach to pilots regarding my research, this morning I was contacted by one Captain Basma Al Nayady, a commercial pilot for Emirates Airline, who, yesterday, September 15, 2025 at 1:58 p.m. EEST (Eastern European Summer Time), departed Queen Alia International Airport in Amman, Jordan enroute to Dubai International Airport, United Arab Emirates. Not long after takeoff, Captain Al Nayady noted, “The sky was uncharacteristically cloudy. When we got to cruising altitude at about 9,800 meters, and had elevated above the cloud ceiling, I noted a strange occurrence. We flew out over Israel and had turned toward Dubai. The clouds were flat and bright and there was only blue sky above them when small clouds appeared ahead of us. They looked like dots at first, but they grew longer, into what looked like missiles or bombs. There were about a thousand of them suspended there. Then, in unison, they dropped to the cloud floor, and upon landing created small mushroom clouds that sprouted up. The clouds were carpeted with these exploding formations. And then we flew on and left it behind us.”
b. Conclusion: Again, inconclusive. Second-hand accounts that parallel manmade historical events and natural disasters provide only an occasion for theories. Lacking any way to test these theories with scientific rigor, my results are merely corollary associations. In other words, I am doing what people have been doing forever: projecting.
In my most basic training as a scientist, I’ve been instilled with the notion that correlation does not imply causation. And in truth, I see nothing beyond correlation in my research. I cannot for the life of me find any scientific evidence to support what I now feel must be true: clouds are communicating. I feel preposterous, and will no doubt, upon presenting my results, be interrogated or even mocked by my colleagues for the suggestion that this is the case. But how can I ignore these findings that seem to surpass any mere coincidence or anomalous corollary? Beyond the link between thousands of documented cases of psychologically stable individuals reporting peculiar cloud formations from around the world, there is also a mathematical correlation to history. According to the World Meteorological Association, there was a stark 72% reduction in the number of people reporting seeing animals, faces and benign landmarks in industrialized nations beginning in July of 1914 (the commencement of the first World War), juxtaposed with an 830% increase in reports of individuals claiming to see catastrophic events, bombings, tanks, and warfare. Even more astonishing is how closely these numbers correlate with the waning of animal populations and the proliferation of ecological catastrophes and mechanized warfare. One could theorize this trend as merely a worldwide psychological shift. If we project our hopes and, more substantively, our fears, onto the benign canvas of clouds, it would track that living in a world of perpetual warfare and terror, absorbed through a daily exhibition of media reports that drum our brains like waterdrop torture, our psyches would search for meaning in the chaos. But might I suggest that something more is at work here? Several of the reports from this paper were not from individuals under stress. Regina Gaye was reportedly hiking and unaware of the World Trade Center attack when she saw the cloud formations. Jun Li, Wen Chin, and Louise Shultz were mentally stable and under no duress when they saw the forecast of natural disasters in the sky. And what of the whale clouds? There are things in this world that, try as we might, we cannot explain. Ball lightning. The Bermuda Triangle. Namibian Fairy Circles. The Tunguska Event. We live in a world that we will never fully understand. Perhaps our psyches are damaged from witnessing—at least indirectly through media coverage—one atrocity after another. While whimsy might occasionally pull me toward the supernatural, my training keeps me returning to the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Magic is just science that we don’t understand yet.”
