Social media was buzzing with pictures and videos of what many people in the Atlanta area thought was a tornado Tuesday evening. However, I instantly identified it as a “scud cloud” and so did several of my meteorologist colleagues. What are scud clouds and are they harmful?

A National Weather Service website defines them as, “Low, ragged stratiform or cumuliform cloud elements that normally are unattached to larger thunderstorm or cold frontal cloud bases. Scud or pannus is a type of fractus clouds that can look ominous but by themselves are not dangerous.” Check out this website with pictures of “fake tornadoes” that turned out to be scud, shelf clouds, or smoke.

Atlanta was experiencing thunderstorms on Tuesday night and several pictures surfaced of an ominous looking cloud near the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium. The same cloud feature was also photographed from other perspectives too. Meteorologist colleagues like Brad Nitz in Atlanta and James Spann in Birmingham tried to post explanations to offset the viral misinformation.

To be fair, the cloud photographed in Atlanta looked very similar to a funnel cloud or tornado. However, the lack of rotation was the key indicator that this was not a tornado. Nitz, who happens to be my classmate in the Florida State University Department of Meteorology a few decades ago wrote, “That’s a scud cloud. Warm moist air rising in a thunderstorm updraft and the water vapor condenses. It’s harmless, but scary looking. No rotation is the key to recognizing scud, not tornado.”