Monday, July 12, 2010

Strange Rainbow

These rainbow fragments appeared over our house on Saturday evening:




What is going on here?  They were only there for a few minutes.  The upper arc was upside down (shaped like a smile), with the red on the bottom and the violet on the top, the lower arc appeared to be a fragment of a regular rainbow.  We live in southern California, almost 10 miles from the ocean, so I think that rules out circumzenithal arc or reflection rainbow.

Any meteorologists or shamans out there who can tell me what this means?

3 comments:

  1. Confucius Say: When rainbow smiles on you, it is your lucky day. ;)

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  2. your search for the pot of gold will lead you to another magical place

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  3. Those are called sun dogs! Woof! They're caused by high altitude ice crystals. They appear on either side of the sun, facing in opposite directions, including the order of the colors. Basically the ice crystals are acting like prisms, similar to the way water droplets act when you see a more typical rainbow.

    - Philip

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