Nature is beautiful and won't seize to amaze us, there are hundreds of strange and bizzare phenomenal some of which takes special timing and right conditions to appear. Clouds appear white, but have you seen a cloud with all the bright hue of rainbow colours?. Such event is breathtaking and I know you'll surely want to see for yourself someday

During the summer, if you're very lucky, you may notice a cloud in the sky that looks just like a rainbow. These so-called “fire rainbows” are actually known as circumhorizontal arcs and can occur when the sun has risen higher than 58° in the sky.

For those living at mid-latitudes, the best chance to see this phenomenon is in the middle of summer. The rarity of the event is highly dependent upon latitude and weather conditions. The potential for these arcs to form in Los Angeles is 5-10 times higher than in London.

We can say circumhorizontal arcs belongs to family of ice halos formed by the refraction of sunlight or moonlight in plate-shaped ice crystal suspended in the atmosphere, typically in cirrus or cirrotarus clouds. In its full form, the arc has the appearance of a large, brightly spectrum-coloured band (red being the topmost colour) running parallel to the horizon, located far below the Sun or Moon.

Aside from the position of the sun, the other ingredient to forming circumhorizontal arcs is cirrus clouds. Cirrus clouds are the thin, wispy clouds that occur at higher altitudes. Because the temperature is so low where these clouds exist, they are made of ice crystals. After the sun is higher than 58°, the light refracts through the plate-like crystals, which act like prisms and create the rainbow.

Circumhorizontal arcs aren’t the only optical illusion created by the sun and cirrus clouds; iridescent clouds, infralateral arcs, and circumzenithal arcs are just a few other ways the sun can create beautiful rainbow-colored clouds.

Content created and supplied by: Olusanya (via Opera News )