October is delighting Manitobans with sights to see in the sky. Christine Murray was one of those Manitobans who happened to be looking up at the right time to witness a unique cloud formation on a sunny Friday morning. “I looked up and I thought, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’” Murray said on Monday. “It was very odd.” Murray tells CTV News she went to go check on her dog, Brinkley, who was playing outside on their farm near Sanford, MB. “Those kinds of clouds are that are very thin and sort of wispy, you know that come in rows like that, and then just at the end of it, kind of a big hole,” she said. “That if you didn’t know better, you’d think, ‘Am I going to get sucked up into this hole?’ You start thinking about things you’ve seen in the movies and things.” Murray believes the formation was a fallstreak hole, also known as a hole-punch cloud. CTV News spoke with Environment and Climate Change Canada back in January 2025 to discuss these meteorological phenomena. They typically form within mid- to high-level clouds and are created when water droplets freeze. A spokesperson for ECCC said when ice crystals are introduced into the clouds, typically by a plane, the water droplets will freeze, then they will grow and fall. A hole is left behind as the water droplets freeze and fall towards the ground. Murray said she enjoyed witnessing the fall streak cloud formation in the sky and said she had never seen anything like it in close to living 35 years on the same property. “My brother lives a mile and a half away from me, and when he saw my picture, he immediately looked out the window, and by then it was gone already,” Murray said. “I don’t think it lasted very long. Maybe ten minutes, and it would already have taken a different form. You really had to be looking in the right place at the right time.” Murray is encouraging Manitobans to get out and enjoy the October skies while the weather holds some warmer temperatures. She said she’s had a chance to witness more than one cool moment in the sky as of late. “The strange thing is, I feel like I’m not often in the right place at the right time, but that fireball that was over Manitoba about a month ago, I happened to be looking up right at that second too, so it was like all these little natural phenomena are happening all at once,” Murray said. “You never know what you might see.”
