Pat Wesley Howard of Pulaski County, Kentucky posted this photo to The Weather Channel's Facebook page on Thursday night after sunset.

One Kentucky woman got quite the surprise when she looked up into the sky and saw something unexpected: a shark swimming through the clouds.

As a child, you likely spent many afternoons gazing up at the clouds to try to find shapes. But the shape in the photo above is actually formed by a gap in the clouds, known as a .

Pat Wesley Howard of Kentucky posted the photo to The Weather Channel's after she captured Thursday just after sunset. "There appears to be a 'shark' lurking in the western skyline!" she wrote.

Hole-punch clouds are formed when planes fly through altocumulous clouds.

"Ice crystals are formed after the aircraft punches through, which grow by, essentially, attracting supercooled liquid water droplets surrounding them, then falling out of the cloud due to their weight, leaving a hole in the cloud deck," said weather.com senior digital meteorologist .

In this case, all the elements came together to form quite the uncanny likeness, making it all the more fascinating.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Hole-Punch Clouds

Hole-Punch Clouds

From Gibson, La. in December 2008. iWitness Weather contributor jamiecg.