Had I not seen pictures of the phenomenon recently, I would have thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. First, a yelp. My dogs stopped and perked their ears. We heard two more yelps before finding the source of the noise – and then it took off skyward. The large bird flew, and my eyes followed it towards the sun until they landed upon the multi-colored cloud.
According to Wikipedia, fire rainbows, or – more specifically – circumhorizontal arcs, are “ice-halos formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds.” I tried to race home and get to a camera, but it disappeared within seconds of moving from my original viewpoint. All I can say is that I’m glad that I saw it for the brief time that I did and, here, I share a photo from someone who was lucky enough to have a camera at the ready.
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About Stormy Sweitzer - Maoomba-in-chief
Wow! What a neat thing to see. I would have been lost in google the rest of the day trying to wrap my head around this.
Hey Kita – thanks for dropping by! It was a pretty amazing thing to see. The crazy thing is that I saw a second one later on in a completely different part of the sky. It must be the odd fall that we’re having.
Oh wow, that’s really, really cool. I also would be googling it all day trying to make sure my eyes didn’t trick me!