(RNN) - An extremely rare "horseshoe cloud" was photographed Thursday in the skies over Battle Mountain, NV.
National Weather Service in Elko, NV, shared in a tweet two photographs from Christy Grimes of the rare formation.
One of the rarest clouds ever. This was taken over Battle Mountain, Nevada, USA on 8 March 2018.
It's called a horseshoe cloud for obvious reasons. #nvwx
Credit goes to eagle-eye Christy Grimes. pic.twitter.com/XgQDY77ZzM
— NWS Elko (@NWSElko) March 9, 2018
Also called mustache clouds, the strange shapes form "at the edges of horizontal cylinders of rapidly rotating air" from updrafts caused by supercell storms, according to the Farmer's Almanac.
Winds rushing in to feed a supercell can produce the odd shape.
The vortex created from the updraft, which is set to spinning when it reaches horizonal winds above, shears away a bit of water vapor from a cloud and bends it around the vortex, New Scientist said.
Conditions are rarely right to produce the misshapen sound, and the phenomenon is typically short-lived,
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