Heads up for pictures in the clouds

Arather sad member of the Nuts and Bolts team sees things that other mere mortals do not. No, he’s not totally delusional he just thinks he sees images among cloud formations that most of us don’t.

We’ve mentioned this strange fascination before.

So he can look at the sky on a cloudy day and see the shape of a country in a cloud or someone’s face. When he asks others if they can also see the likeness they usually reply: “What the hell are you talking about.”

So our cloud man got very excited when Clair Raferty sent us this cloud picture snapped over Ashford last week.

It was actually taken just before the town was hit by a few flakes of unseasonal spring snow.

But our man immediately likened it to an atomic cloud created by a nuclear blast.

Seeing such images is called pareidolia, which is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern of something where none actually exists.

Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations and hidden messages within recorded music played in reverse or at higher or lower than normal speeds. And it isn’t confined to clouds.

People see images in rock formations, on pictures of the planets, in aerial pictures of the countryside and, of course, toast and other food and drink.

That’s all very well but in our opinion our man needs to get out more (or maybe not ... as he’d only see even more clouds then!)

An ‘atomic blast’ cloud over Ashford: a face in a cloud; and a pareidolia of an Apache head in rocks in France