The ice crystals that make up these clouds provide a surface upon which chlorine in the stratosphere can be converted to highly reactive compounds like chlorine monoxide.

This special “smiling rainbow” only appears in the sky when the sun is around 22 degrees above the horizon. The sun may be ...

Many of our viewers have captured pictures of rainbow clouds and this is actually called cloud iridescence. Meteorologist Lauren Brand explains this weather wonder.

In order to have a ring, moonlight (reflected sunlight) must bend (refract) through (usually) hexagonal columnar-shaped ice crystals in cirrus clouds 25,000 to 30,000 feet above the Earth.

Ice crystals form interesting light patterns in the sky, seen from Park City on Friday, Jan. 1, 2021. ... Rainbow is a misnomer since these optical effects are made of ice.

The optical phenomenon is an an ice-halo formed by plate shaped ice crystals in atmospheric clouds, characterized by thin, wisplike strands leading to their main clump, known as Cirrus.

Ice crystals in high cirrus clouds created the horizontal rainbow captured Monday about five miles east of Nipomo.

With temperatures in the double digits below zero, an ice crystal rainbow forms over downtown Billings on Thursday morning. Temperatures ticked up above zero Thursday, but were forecast to drip ...