paint the sky with clouds

Walking down to work from the car park this morning, I was greeted by a marvelous sky -- and what appeared to be the cause.

a power station paints the clouds?

Zoom in on the "source", and you can see individual columns of vapour from the several cooling towers of a nearby power station.  The juxtaposition with the clouds makes for a great optical illusion: from this angle, the plume appears to be the source of the entire sky of clouds.

Down the bottom of the path, the view opened out, allowing sight of two more power stations, apparently also painting the sky with clouds.

well, the one on the right hasn't started painting yet, obviously...