The Cause of the Cloud

Click on headings to expand them, or links to go to specific articles.

Click here to find out about THE definitive book on William Branham - Under The Halo: Examining the Legacy of William Branham

The Cloud: Just the Facts • Intro • Prophesied? • Location? • Cause? • Rostron Debunked • Timing?

The Cloud (Part 2) - What Caused The Cloud?.

Load video

YouTube

YouTube might collect personal data. Privacy Policy

ContinueDismiss

Page 112 of the May 1963 edition of Life Magazine

The Arizona Cloud of February 28, 1963

At around sunset on February 28, 1963, an unusual cloud appeared in the vicinity of Flagstaff, Arizona and remained sunlit for 28 minutes after sunset. It attracted significant scientific attention, appearing in the May 1963 edition of Life Magazine, Science Magazine (April 19, 1963), Weatherwise Magazine (June 1963), and an independent scientific report issued May 31, 1963.

Dr. James E. McDonald of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona initially estimated the cloud's altitude at approximately 35 kilometers, later revising that figure to approximately 43 kilometers (141,000 feet). Despite his investigation, no conclusive public explanation was offered at the time.

---

What Does the Cloud Mean?

Followers of William Branham's message view the cloud as supernatural — the fulfillment of a December 1962 vision in which Branham foresaw seven angels meeting him outside Tucson, Arizona (see Prophecy of the Cloud).. They connect it to his subsequent opening of the Seven Seals and regard it as divine confirmation of his prophetic ministry.

Critics take a different view entirely. They argue the cloud has a straightforward natural explanation: it was the debris from a Thor rocket intentionally destroyed over Vandenberg Air Force Base earlier that same day. More significantly, critics argue that Branham's own testimony about being present at the cloud's formation is demonstrably false — a story that emerged only after he saw the Life Magazine photograph, and that directly contradicts verifiable facts about the cloud's location and timing.

---

The Scientific Explanation

On February 28, 1963, a thrust-assisted Thor rocket was launched from pad 75-3-5 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a Keyhole 4 military surveillance satellite. The rocket veered off course and was intentionally destroyed at an altitude of 44 kilometers (144,000 feet) at 1:52 p.m.

Several lines of evidence connect the rocket to the cloud:

1. Same day. The rocket was destroyed on the same day the cloud appeared.
2. Same altitude. The rocket was destroyed at 44 kilometers; the cloud was independently estimated at 43 kilometers — a near-exact match.
3. Consistent wind speeds. No wind speed data was recorded at Vandenberg on that specific day, but Dr. McDonald noted that wind speeds measured at comparable altitudes at other times were "tantalizingly close" to what would have been required to carry debris from Vandenberg to Flagstaff. Since wind speeds vary by location and altitude, these measurements are consistent with a transport scenario, not proof against one.
4. Military confirmation. When launch records were later declassified, the United States Air Force released documentation confirming that the cloud resulted from a military rocket operation.

In March 2012 NASA made some clouds in the morning sky with a shape and height similar to the February 1963 cloud.

Dr. McDonald initially noted that clouds do not normally form at mesospheric altitudes — but subsequent research demonstrated that visible exhaust clouds from rocket launches can indeed reach into the mesosphere. NASA has since created similar high-altitude clouds in chemical experiments, and some closely resemble the shape photographed on February 28 — appearing without any visible exhaust trail back to the launch site.

Today, rocket launches from Vandenberg are routinely documented on video. Depending on atmospheric conditions, they can be seen from Tucson and beyond, leaving mesospheric clouds that remain illuminated well after sunset. This kind of direct visual evidence was simply unavailable in 1963.

Scientists also linked similar clouds appearing later in 1963 to rocket launches:

A bright noctilucent cloud was observed and photographed northwest of Tucson on 15 June 1963. Results of computations indicate that the cloud was at a height of 71 kilometers. The cloud appears to have resulted from the launching of a Scout space vehicle.

Measurement of the filamentary noctilucent cloud of 2 November 1963 yields a height of 56 km. Study of the motion and orientation of the cloud confirms the hypothesis that these unusual clouds appearing in the southwestern states are produced by the launching of rocket vehicles from the Pacific Missile Range.

Why Didn't Dr. McDonald Publish a Final Report?

Dr. McDonald was senior physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and professor of meteorology at the University of Arizona. He was also well known for his serious investigation of UFO reports — which makes him an unlikely candidate to shelve a genuinely unexplained phenomenon simply out of disinterest. The most natural explanation for his failure to publish a final report is that he arrived at a sufficient explanation — the rocket — and didn't consider that conclusion publishable as a scientific finding. A researcher who made his reputation pursuing phenomena that defied conventional science would not have quietly dropped the subject if it remained genuinely mysterious.

---

Dr. McDonald's Own Assessment

In April 1967, Dr. McDonald wrote a letter to The Arizona Republic that leaves no ambiguity about his conclusions:

---

THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC — Wednesday, April 5, 1967

Mysterious Cloud Formation Vanishes Under Examination

Editor, The Arizona Republic:

The March 26 issue of your Sunday supplement, Arizona, carried an article by Reporter Dave Davies, entitled "The Cloud," concerning a very unusual stratospheric cloud formation that appeared over Flagstaff on Feb. 28, 1963.

My investigations of that cloud are quoted in part, but a number of aspects of my findings were omitted or overlooked, so that the supernatural and religious construction that has been put on that event was improperly supported.

I am quoted as "frankly skeptical," as if to suggest that I am half-convinced, half-unconvinced by the occult interpretation. I am, in fact, wholly unconvinced and regard the entire business as quite distressing.

IT IS NOT CORRECT that the cloud "swept northward across Arizona." It moved in from almost due west. If Mr. Sothman saw anything which he thought to be a "strange circular-shaped cloud rise into the air" over Branham's head, he is clearly talking about some other cloud than that of Feb. 28 over Flagstaff.

Sothman is quoted as asserting that "it was kind of small at first, but the higher it rose the bigger it became." The observations of scores of reliable witnesses disinclined to pseudo-religious interpretations attest to the fact that the Flagstaff cloud appeared and disappeared without significant overall size or shape change.

Rev. Pearry Green, cited in the article, asserted to me (in a phone conversation in which I pointed out many discrepancies in the occult interpretation he and others seek to place on this event) that the "seven angels," after speaking to Rev. Branham, flew up into the sky and assumed the form of this cloud which, he claims, outlined the face of Christ to Branham.

AS A MATTER of fact, the photograph which accompanied the recent article as alleged documentation of this angelic revelation constitutes a projection entirely different from that which an observer would have seen in Branham's reported location in the Sunset Mountain area.

From the latter area, as also from Tucson where I myself saw it, the cloud bore absolutely no resemblance to any face. Rev. Mr. Green asserts that "facial features" can be seen in the inside of the cloud. When I told him no such features are detectable on the original prints, and when I asked for sample copies of the prints which he claimed showed such features, I never received any copies to examine.

And the amusing matter of the satellite cloud, west of Flagstaff, which shows on numerous photos taken from eastern Arizona and New Mexico, but which Branham's group did not know about until I confronted Green with it, seems to go a long way towards exposing the irrationality of the religious interpretations.

DAVIES OMITTED all mention of data I gave him on the detonation of a rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base at almost precisely the elevation of that cloud, about four hours earlier that day. Although there do indeed remain difficulties in explaining that cloud, supernaturalism ought not be even a last resort.

Let's keep the Middle Ages back where they belong.

JAMES E. MCDONALD, Professor, UofA, Institute of Atmospheric Physics

---

Why Wasn't the Cloud Visible Before Sunset?

The cloud sat at approximately 43 kilometers altitude — well into the mesosphere. At that height, it remained illuminated by direct sunlight even after the sun dropped below the horizon for ground observers. This is exactly the same optical geometry that makes noctilucent clouds visible at twilight: the lower atmosphere falls into shadow first, while objects at very high altitude continue to catch oblique sunlight for some time afterward. The 28-minute post-sunset illumination period is entirely consistent with a mesospheric cloud and requires no supernatural explanation.

This also accounts for why the cloud wasn't noticed earlier. High-altitude clouds of this type are too faint to be seen against a bright daytime sky. They become visible only once the background sky darkens enough at dusk. A cloud present at 43 kilometers since 1:52 p.m. could easily have gone unobserved until twilight.

---

The Second Cloud

Science Magazine April 1963 page 292

Science Magazine April 1963 page 293

Science Magazine April 1963 page 294

The April 1963 Science Magazine article documented a second cloud visible in photographs taken from eastern Arizona and New Mexico, appearing to the northwest of the main cloud. Dr. McDonald raised this himself in his 1967 letter, noting that Branham's group was unaware of it until he confronted Pearry Green with the photographic evidence.

This poses a direct problem for the supernatural interpretation. If the main cloud formed from angels ascending after their meeting with Branham, what produced the second cloud? A companion cloud is exactly what one would expect from a rocket debris field dispersed across diverging high-altitude wind currents. It fits no version of the angelic account.

---

Responding to Bill Rostron

"When it's all said and done you'll either have to say one or two things — I don't know what that is, it's a mystery — and brother Bill will say enough to that the world will have to admit we don't have an answer. But the Bride has an answer." — Pastor Luke Gibson, introducing Bill Rostron's series

Five Hours in Defense of a Story Branham Never Told

Bill Rostron is exactly the kind of person Message believers need making arguments on their behalf. He spent 46 years in the nuclear power industry doing quality assurance and root cause analysis. He knows how to build a chain of evidence. He takes his work seriously. And in his nearly six-hour series In Defense of the Supernatural Cloud (March 2020), recorded at the Tabernacle of the Lord in Townville, South Carolina, he applies genuine technical skill to the question of whether a Thor rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base could have produced the famous cloud over Flagstaff on February 28, 1963.

The result is a presentation that is methodologically serious in parts, fatally flawed in others, and — most importantly — never once asks the question that actually matters.

---

What Rostron Claims, and What He Admits He Can't Prove

Start with what Rostron himself says at the close of his series:

"All of the things we've said today doesn't prove that God did it, but it sure does prove that man didn't do it."

That's an honest statement. Credit where it's due. Rostron is not claiming to have scientifically proven a supernatural event. He's claiming to have eliminated the rocket as a natural cause.

But by the end of the evening, Pastor Gibson is telling the congregation that they don't need an answer — they already have one. The crowd is singing. The cloud has become proof of Revelation 10:1–7 and divine confirmation of William Branham's ministry. The gap between "man didn't do it" and "God did it" has been closed by emotional momentum, not logic.

This is the first and most important error of the entire presentation. Ruling out one natural explanation does not establish supernatural causation. That logical gap is not a technicality — it is the entire structure of the argument. Rostron builds a case against the rocket, and the congregation quietly converts his inconclusive findings into proof of the miraculous. No one in the room challenges this move. It should be challenged.

---

The Self-Defeating Moisture Argument

Rostron spends a significant portion of Video 1 and Video 2 establishing a genuine point of atmospheric physics: natural moisture gets "wrung out" of the air as altitude increases, and by the time you reach the stratosphere and mesosphere, the water vapor content is so low — he puts it at about five parts per million — that cloud formation is essentially impossible under normal conditions.

He's right about this. Natural clouds do not form at 43 kilometers. This is not disputed.

But Rostron then uses this fact to argue against the rocket hypothesis. Here's the problem: the rocket hypothesis does not require natural moisture. The entire premise of the rocket explanation is that the Thor, when destroyed at 44 kilometers, introduced water and combustion products into an environment that would not otherwise contain them. That's precisely why the cloud appeared where natural clouds don't.

Rostron's atmospheric moisture argument doesn't undermine the rocket hypothesis. It actually explains why the rocket hypothesis is necessary — because something had to put water up there. His own analysis establishes that the cloud required an external source of water, then pivots to arguing the rocket couldn't have been that source. But he never actually closes the loop on the water source question. He's eliminated natural formation and claimed to eliminate the rocket. What he hasn't done is identify where a non-supernatural source of water would come from. The argument proves too much: if no natural process could produce the cloud and the rocket couldn't either, he needs a third candidate. "God did it" is not a third candidate in a root cause analysis — it's an admission that the analysis is over.

---

The Mass Calculation: A Critical Omission

This is where Rostron's engineering rigour breaks down most clearly.

His key quantitative argument is this: he estimates the cloud required approximately 2.2 million pounds (about 1 million kilograms) of water to form. He then points to the Castor-1 solid rocket boosters attached to the Thor and notes they contained roughly 12,000 pounds of solid propellant each. Three boosters, therefore about 34,000–36,000 pounds total. That's vastly less than 2.2 million pounds of water. Ergo, the rocket couldn't have done it.

The problem is that Rostron has analysed the wrong part of the rocket.

The Thrust Augmented Thor that was destroyed on February 28, 1963 was a liquid-fueled missile. Its main engine burned RP-1 kerosene with liquid oxygen — not solid propellant. The Castor-1 solid boosters were strapped-on assist motors that burned for approximately 37–40 seconds during the initial ascent, reaching around 10–15 kilometers altitude, after which they were jettisoned. By the time the range safety officer destroyed the vehicle at 44 kilometers, those solid boosters had been gone for over two minutes.

The main Thor engine — the liquid-fueled engine still burning when the rocket was destroyed — is where the water was coming from. RP-1 kerosene combusted with liquid oxygen produces two products: carbon dioxide and water. The stoichiometry is straightforward. For every kilogram of RP-1 burned, approximately 1.3–1.4 kilograms of water is produced. The Thor carried roughly 22,000 kilograms of RP-1 and 34,000 kilograms of liquid oxygen. Even if only a fraction of those propellants remained unburned at time of destruction and were subsequently dispersed and burned by the explosion, the potential water output dwarfs the solid booster contribution that Rostron calculated.

Rostron never calculates this. In a presentation framed as "root cause analysis" and "going back to first principles," he simply ignores the primary propellant system of the primary stage. A nuclear quality assurance process would flag this immediately: you haven't analysed the dominant source term.

He does show a striking Space Shuttle exhaust cloud (STS-131) as a visual comparison, but the comparison is misleading. That photograph was taken five minutes after launch, during active burning. The 1963 cloud appeared three and a half hours after the rocket's destruction. Of course they look different. Arguing that rocket exhaust in active flight looks unlike a dispersed, wind-shaped cloud hours later proves nothing about whether the rocket caused the cloud.

---

The Cloud Density Contradiction: Rostron's Framework Collapses His Own Math

There is a deeper problem with the mass calculation that Rostron doesn't notice — because it requires him to apply his own logic consistently, which he doesn't.

Throughout the presentation, Rostron correctly invokes the analogy of noctilucent clouds to explain one of the cloud's most striking features: why nobody saw it until sunset. He explains the physics accurately. Noctilucent clouds are visible only at twilight because they are too faint to scatter enough light to be visible against a bright daytime sky. They only appear once the background sky darkens and sunlight catches them from below the horizon. He uses this same principle to explain why the Flagstaff cloud was invisible during the day and only appeared as the sun went down.

This is the correct explanation. But Rostron never follows that logic into his density calculation.

Noctilucent clouds are extraordinarily tenuous. Their ice water content is typically on the order of 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁶ grams per cubic meter — roughly one thousand to one hundred thousand times less dense than an ordinary cirrus cloud. That tenuousness is not incidental to how they behave. It is why they can't be seen in daylight. A cirrus cloud, with its density of around 0.03 to 0.05 g/m³, is clearly visible in full sunlight. Something only visible during a narrow twilight window, when the background sky is dark and the sun's rays are hitting it from far below the horizon, has to be far, far thinner than a cirrus cloud.

Rostron's mass calculation uses a cirrus cloud density of 1/20 gram per cubic meter (0.05 g/m³). That's how he arrives at his 2.2 million pound figure. But he has already established — in the same presentation — that the cloud behaved like a noctilucent cloud in terms of its visibility. You cannot simultaneously claim a cloud is too tenuous to be seen in daylight and assume cirrus-level ice density when calculating how much water formed it. Those two claims are mutually exclusive.

The numbers make this stark. At cirrus density (0.05 g/m³), Rostron calculates roughly 1.35 million kilograms of water needed. Now apply a density consistent with something only visible at twilight — say, 10⁻⁴ g/m³, which is still five hundred times denser than a typical noctilucent cloud and thus a very conservative estimate:

27 billion m³ × 0.0001 g/m³ = 2,700 kilograms — about 5,950 pounds

At actual noctilucent cloud densities (10⁻⁵ g/m³):

27 billion m³ × 0.00001 g/m³ = 270 kilograms — about 595 pounds

Not 2.2 million pounds. Hundreds of pounds. The Thor rocket's main liquid-fueled engine — which Rostron ignored entirely — produced combustion byproducts including water on the order of tens of thousands of kilograms. Even the Castor-1 solid boosters that Rostron himself analysed exceed this threshold by a significant margin.

Rostron uses noctilucent cloud physics when it helps explain daytime invisibility, then quietly reverts to cirrus cloud density when he needs a large number for his water mass argument. A root cause analysis doesn't get to choose which physical properties apply and when. Either the cloud was dense enough to behave like a cirrus cloud (visible in daylight, requiring ~2.2 million pounds of water) or it was tenuous enough to behave like a noctilucent cloud (invisible in daylight, requiring a tiny fraction of that). It cannot be both.

---

The Anachronistic Wind Data

One of the more striking methodological errors in the series is Rostron's use of earth.nullschool.net — a real-time global wind visualization website — to argue about what the winds were doing at high altitude on February 28, 1963.

He pulls up current wind patterns above Arizona, shows that the winds at 10 millibar altitude (roughly 100,000 feet, or about 30 km) are around 65 km/h in the analysis session's present, and argues these speeds are insufficient to carry rocket debris from Vandenberg to Flagstaff in 3.5 hours. He acknowledges he's watched the website "over the years" and noted seasonal patterns, but then uses a single day's reading as if it characterises the wind field on a specific day six decades earlier.

Wind patterns at stratospheric and mesospheric altitudes are highly variable. They change with season, with quasi-biennial oscillation cycles, with individual synoptic events. Knowing what the winds are doing today tells you nothing reliable about what they were doing on a specific day in February 1963. Dr. McDonald, who actually collected observational data at the time, described the measured wind speeds as "tantalizingly close" to what would be required. Rostron cites this but dismisses it on the grounds that McDonald "couldn't figure out how it would work" — which is not the same as saying it couldn't have worked. McDonald was being scientifically conservative. Rostron is using present-day wind data to argue about past atmospheric conditions. These are not equivalent moves.

---

A Confusion About Wind Direction

Rostron also argues that the wind direction was wrong for the rocket hypothesis. He says the cloud was observed to be "moving towards the southeast," and from this calculates a required wind origin of about 310 degrees (northwest). He then claims that a northwest wind at Vandenberg would carry debris toward Baja California, not Flagstaff.

But Vandenberg Air Force Base is located to the west-northwest of Flagstaff. Flagstaff is roughly to the east-northeast of Vandenberg. A wind blowing from the northwest — pushing things toward the southeast — would carry material from Vandenberg's vicinity toward the direction of Arizona. Rostron's claim that such a wind would instead send debris "into Mexico in Baja California" appears to reflect a geographical confusion about the relative positions of these locations. Rather than disproving the rocket hypothesis, his own wind direction data may be consistent with it.

---

The Question Rostron Never Asks

Here is what is missing from five hours and fifty-four minutes of technically detailed presentation: any engagement with William Branham's own testimony about the cloud.

Rostron establishes (or attempts to establish) that the cloud was not produced by a Thor rocket. He never mentions that:

Branham claimed to be standing directly underneath the cloud when it appeared. He wasn't. The cloud appeared over Flagstaff. By Branham's own account of his activities on that trip, he was approximately 200 miles away near Sunset Mountain and Rattlesnake Mesa.

Branham stated that the cloud formed when the angels left him. The cloud appeared on February 28. Branham's own sermons describe the angelic visitation as occurring on March 8 — eight days later. A cloud cannot be the departure of angels from a meeting that had not yet taken place.

Branham said nothing about any connection between the cloud and his ministry until he was shown the photograph in Life Magazine — months after the cloud appeared. If he had witnessed the angels ascending into the sky and forming that cloud, that silence is inexplicable.

A second cloud is visible in the scientific photographs. Documented in Science Magazine (April 1963), this companion cloud appears to the northwest of the main cloud, consistent with debris dispersal from a single source. No version of the angelic account accounts for a second cloud.

These are not peripheral criticisms. They are facts drawn from Branham's own recordings and from the eyewitness documentation available at the time. Whether the cloud was caused by a rocket, a natural phenomenon, or something else entirely, Branham's own account of his involvement with it cannot be reconciled with the documented facts. Rostron's entire analysis — even if every calculation were correct — only defends the possibility that the cloud was unusual. It does nothing to explain why Branham's story about the cloud changed over time, why he placed himself at its formation when he demonstrably wasn't there, or why he first learned of the cloud from a magazine.

---

What the Presentation Actually Establishes

To be precise about what Rostron's analysis shows and doesn't show:

He correctly demonstrates that natural clouds do not form at 43 kilometers through ordinary atmospheric processes. This is real atmospheric science and he explains it clearly.

He correctly notes that the cloud was unusual and that McDonald found it difficult to explain WHEN FIRST CONFRONTED with the data available to him in 1963. However, MacDonald's story changed by the time of his response in 1967.

He raises legitimate questions about whether the Castor-1 solid boosters alone could account for the cloud's size. This is a fair point, though he reaches it by ignoring the primary propulsion system. He also ignores the amount of water vapour required for noctilucent clouds.

What his analysis does not establish is that the rocket could not have caused the cloud. His wind speed calculation uses anachronistic data. His mass calculation omits the main engine. His moisture argument supports rather than undermines the rocket hypothesis. And his conclusion — that supernatural causation is therefore implied — does not follow from his premises even if those premises were correct.

---

A Word for Those Who Are Watching

If you've sat through this series, or heard someone cite it, or had it shared with you as the definitive answer to critics of the Message, you deserve to know what it actually proved and what it didn't.

Rostron is a capable engineer who spent months on this project. He clearly cares deeply about his faith, and he is trying to be rigorous. That's admirable. But rigour has to go all the way through — including to the question of whether the person whose testimony you're defending actually told a consistent, verifiable story. The scientific question of what caused the cloud is genuinely interesting but Rostron fails to disprove the rocket argment... in fact, he helps to prove it.

But the problem with Branham's cloud story was never primarily scientific. It was always about why a man who claimed to stand under a cloud was 200 miles away when it appeared, why the cloud preceded his vision's fulfillment by eight days, and why he never mentioned any of this until a magazine brought the photograph to his attention.

Those questions don't get answered by atmospheric physics. They get answered — or not answered — by Branham's own words.

The honest thing to do is listen to those words again, carefully, and ask whether the story holds together. Not because critics want it to fail, but because the truth matters. A faith built on a story that doesn't hold up isn't safer for not being examined. It's just more fragile.

Problems with the Spiritual Interpretation

The chronological and geographical facts present serious, unresolved difficulties for those who believe the cloud was a supernatural sign connected to Branham's angelic visitation.

1. Location mismatch. The cloud appeared near Flagstaff. Branham's reported angelic visitation occurred at Rattlesnake Mesa near Sunset Mountain — roughly 200 miles away. If the cloud was meant to mark the event, it appeared in the wrong place.

2. Branham claimed to be standing under it. He said this explicitly and repeatedly. He was approximately 200 miles from where the cloud actually appeared.

3. The timing is backwards. Branham stated that the cloud formed as the angels left him. The cloud appeared on February 28. By his own account, the angelic visitation happened on March 8 — eight days later. A cloud cannot be the result of an event that had not yet occurred.

4. No mention until the magazine. Branham said nothing about any connection between the cloud and his angelic visitation until after someone showed him the Life Magazine photograph. If he had been present at the cloud's formation — or even aware of its significance — this silence is inexplicable.

5. The magazine's location. Branham claimed the magazine article was describing the same location where he was hunting. It was not.

6. The face in the cloud. Message believers have claimed the photograph shows a face. Dr. McDonald examined the original prints and found no such features. When he asked Pearry Green for copies of the prints that supposedly showed them, none were ever provided.

7. Which direction was the face looking? If the cloud bore the face of Christ, the photograph shows it oriented toward Las Vegas — not toward Branham's location.

Some message ministers have attempted to resolve the timing problem by claiming Branham said privately that the angels had been waiting a week before he arrived. This doesn't hold up. The statement appears nowhere in Branham's recorded sermons and cannot be verified. More critically, it directly contradicts Branham's own public account — that the cloud formed when the angels left, not when they arrived. A private, unrecorded explanation that contradicts the public record should carry very little weight.

---

Key Documents

1. Declassified 1963 02 28 Thor launch record
2. Declassified 1963 02 28 Pitch Pine launch record
3. University of Arizona letter of June 5, 1980
4. 1995 01 26 Air Force letter - page 1 and page 2
5. 1996 08 23 letter from Mrs. Meinel
6. 1996 09 10 letter from Mrs. MacDonald

Video Script

At dusk on February 28, 1963, a cloud appeared in the skies above Flagstaff, Arizona and remained sunlit for 28 minutes after sunset. It was highlighted in the May 1963 edition of Life Magazine. William Branham explained that the cloud was part of the fulfillment of a vision that he had in December 1962.

IT.IS.THE.RISING.OF.THE.SUN_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-12 SUNDAY_ 65-0418M

Later, the Angels appeared as was prophesied. And at the same time, a great cluster of Light left where I was standing, and moved thirty miles high in the air, and around the circle, like the wings of the Angels, and drawed into the skies a shape of a pyramid in the same constellation of Angels that appeared.

Science took the picture, all the way from Mexico, as it moved from northern Arizona, where the Holy Spirit said I would be standing, "forty miles northeast of Tucson." And it went into the air, and Life magazine packed the pictures,

William Branham said that the angels appeared to him while he was standing in northern Arizona, and that when they left him they created a cloud that was pictured in the Life Magazine.

There are a few problems with this.

First, forty miles northeast of Tucson is not northern Arizona. Go get a map and measure it for yourself. The southern tip of the cloud was just north of Flagstaff when the photo was taken. Flagstaff is in northern Arizona, and Tucson is in Southern Arizona.

Second, the cloud that appeared in Life Magazine was photographed one week before William Branham went hunting. William Branham’s daughter Rebecca Smith confirmed this in an article she wrote called “Return to Sunset”, which was published in the “Only Believe” magazine.

Finally, William Branham was hunting in the morning, and the cloud appeared in the evening.

So if the cloud was not caused by angels leaving Brother Branham, as he claimed during this sermon, caused it to appear?

In the Life Magazine article, Dr. James McDonald stated that he was not aware of any rocket explosions that day. However, he later wrote a supplemental report where he discusses the explosion of a THOR rocket that had been launched from Vandenburg Airforce base in California earlier that day.

So we looked at the story of the rocket to try to see how likely it was that this explosion caused the cloud and here's what we found.

On February 28, 1963, a Thrust assisted Thor Agenda D rocket was launched from Vandenberg air force base in California. The rocket was carrying a military spy satellite.

The rocket malfunctioned and was intentionally destroyed at 1:52 in the afternoon at an estimated height of 44 kilometers.

The height of the cloud that appeared over Flagstaff later that same day was estimated to be about 43 kilometers miles high. Is this just a random coincidence?

In order to travel the required distance from California to Arizona, the cloud would have to be travelling at 135 miles per hour that afternoon. But Dr. James McDonald wrote that the wind speed recorded by scientists was, "tantalizingly close" to the 135 mile an hour wind speed required to carry the cloud from Vandenberg to Flagstaff.

The prevailing winds in California blow from west to east. It is also not unusual for Jetstream winds to vary in speed as you go from north to south. Windspeeds on March 1st, 1963 at an altitude of 43 kilometers were 90 miles an hour at White Sands, New Mexico and 125 miles per hour at Point Mugu, California.

Winds and atmospheric conditions are notoriously unpredictable. However, rocket trails from launches at Vandenberg air force base are regularly seen in Arizona… and even as far east as Oklahoma City.

On March 27, 2012, NASA launched 5 suborbital sounding rockets which released a chemical tracer that created milky white clouds 60 miles above the earth. They did this to learn about wind-speeds in the Mesosphere. The pictures that they took reveal circular clouds similar to the February 28, 1963 cloud.

Someone imposed the picture of Jesus from Hoffman’s painting “Christ at 33” into the photo of the 1963 cloud. The painting first had to be reversed to do this. If you are not a message believer, you are likely offended by this picture.

Still, you can take the same picture from Hoffman’s painting and impose it on the clouds from March 2012, without reversing it. If you are a message believer, you are likely offended by this picture.

But, whether you are looking at the 1963 cloud or the 2012 cloud, you have to manipulate the image to make the picture fit.

Questions have been raised as to why the cloud was not seen between Vandenberg and Flagstaff. However, noctilucent clouds are very thin and are only visible at dawn or dusk. They cannot be seen until the sky starts to darken overhead as it does at sunset. That is why the Cloud “appeared” over Flagstaff in the evening and was not seen between California and Flagstff.

Based on all of the facts available, it is not only plausible but highly likely that the cloud over Flagstaff was formed by the high altitude destruction of the Thor rocket over Vandenberg Air force base.

However, our examination of the cloud is not over. We will next look at whether the cloud could be in any way related to the events which occurred at Rattlesnake Mesa.

Evidence from the Branham Family

Rebekah Branham Smith, William Branham's daughter, also wrote on the Cloud and specifically details the timing of the events surrounding the appearance of the Cloud in the Only Believe Magazine, "Road to Sunset".

• Only Believe Magazine, "Road to Sunset", Page 1
• Only Believe Magazine, "Road to Sunset", Page 2
• Only Believe Magazine, "Road to Sunset", Page 3
• Only Believe Magazine, "Road to Sunset", Page 4

You are currently on the page that is in bold.

Navigation

Home Our Podcast The List of Problems Life Story Prophecies & Visions Seven Seals Was William Branham Honest? Doctrines

Church Ages Jesus Languages Videos Print Resources Help! Facebook Contact Us