A rare hole in the sky has been pictured over a British town.
Known as a fallstreak hole or cavum hole, it was snapped over Shepton Mallet in Somerset this week.
It is a large gap usually circular or elliptical that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds.
These so-called holes are formed when water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water, in a supercooled state, has not frozen yet due to the lack of ice nucleation.
When ice crystals do form, a domino effect is set off due to the Bergeron process (the process by which precipitation is initiated in a mixed cloud with temperature below freezing), causing the water droplets around the crystals to evaporate leaving a large, often circular, hole in the cloud.
The result, as you can see from these pictures, is quite photogenic.
