You may be tempted to say, "It’s a rainbow." But it’s not an ordinary ranbow. For one thing, it’s not shaped like a bow.
It’s also not a rainbow because it’s not caused by light refracting through moisture droplets. It’s caused by light interacting with ice crystals, and so is a type of ice halo.
In fact, it’s a type of ice halo known as a circumhorizon arc (so named because it’s an arc that appears near the horizon). This type of phenomenon can only occur under certain conditions:
It occurs when sunlight passes through ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. It is one of 15 types of ice halos formed only when the most specific of factors dovetail precisely together.
[The] clouds must be at least 20,000ft high and the ice crystals within them align horizontally instead of their usual vertical position. The sun also needs to be at least 58 degrees above the horizon.
This particular circumhorizon arc appeared Saturday over the Washington-Idaho border and lasted about an hour.
From what I can tell, it also seems to be one of the more spectacular circumhorizon arcs. There are pictures of other ones on the web, but this one was particularly beautiful.
GET THE STORY.
cht to the readre who emailed.
MORE ON ICE HALOS, INCLUDING RARE ONES (WITH PICTURES!)
Thanks for that! It’s a beauty. I may have to blog that myself. 🙂
It is beautiful—and just looking at it makes my heart lift to God for the gift!
I’ve seen these quite often, but, coincidence or no, they seem to show up during certain blessed events.
One notable one I remember was over JPII’s Dodger Stadium Mass back in the early 80’s. There was a noticible ripple in the crowd, and many people were pointing to it and commenting on the seemingly prodigious timing of the event.
In other odd refractory circumstances, our family saw the most astounding TRIPLE rainbow the day of my grandmother’s funeral.
I’ve heard of double rainbows, but this was a definite triple, with a dim inner bow, a bright middle bow, and a faint, far outer bow.
The really weird thing about the bright inner bow was that the sky outside the bow was dark and overcast, but inside the bow it was bright. The bow looked almost like a dome or a forcefield holding back the darkness outside. It was wacky.
We were driving home from the funeral when we first caught a glimpse of it over the trees and buildings, but eventually on the turnpike we ran across a clear area where we could see the whole sky, and I stopped the car and we just got out and gaped at it.
Nobody had a camera, but I’ll always remember it.
Beautiful photo, Mr. Akin, simply beautiful! You’ve made my day.
What makes this really beautiful is we’re able to see a lot more of the light spectrum than we would in a typical rainbow. Really amazing.
Thanks for sharing that wonderful story SDG, I’ve never heard of a triple rainbow! Knowing how rainbows occur, it must be very rare that folks can see more than 2.
Yes, beautiful is the word that comes to mind.
It reminds me of the last time I saw this… when I was then-living in So. Cal. and we had gone down to Ensenada to an orphanage to play/be with kids for Christmas day 1987.
As we sat outside and watched the children’s “christmas pagaent” I looked up into a sunny clear blue sky and saw this rainbow straight overhead. I photographed this and everyone there saw this as very serendipitous and a sign of God’s favour upon our day together celebrating Jesus’ birth.
My first guess was a sun dog, which I have seen as rainbow-colored.
But that would be vertical.
Supernumerary rainbows? Hrm. I ‘spose Opus Dei had something to do with that.
Sundogs and moondogs are quite common here in the far North in the winter — they can either be vertical or a complete ring around the moon or sun, and are sometimes rainbows.
Beauty of a pic, Jimmy.
I did blog that. Already, my entry is the fourth result returned for a Google of “circumhorizon arc”.