COLUMBIA, S.C. — Last week in Marion County, Zachary Lane captured images of some scary-looking clouds.
His July 9th tweet got a lot of reaction on Twitter. Some called the clouds awesome, others called them scary.
One of his Twitter followers said, "The aliens are finally here." Even though the clouds look ominous, they are harmless.
Lane calls himself a weather junkie on his Twitter profile. The clouds he captured in his images are called scud clouds.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scud cloud is defined as, "small, ragged, low cloud fragments that are unattached to a larger cloud base and often seen with and behind cold fronts and thunderstorm gust fronts."
"Such clouds generally are associated with cool moist air, such as thunderstorm outflow," according to NOAA.
Scud clouds are often mistaken for funnel clouds or tornadoes, especially when they are attached to a thunderstorm.
A scud cloud does not rotate and cannot become a tornado.
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