Fire Rainbow in the Yukon

[June Pelo Senior Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close June Pelo]

This Is A Fire Rainbow - The Rarest Of All Naturally Occurring Atmospheric Phenomena.

The Picture Was Captured This Week On The Idaho / Washington Border. The Event Lasted About 1 Hour.

Clouds Have To Be Cirrus, At Least 20.000 Feet In The Air, With
Just The Right Amount Of Ice Crystals And The Sun Has To Hit
The Clouds At Precisely 58 Degrees.

[Karen Norwillo Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Karen Norwillo]

Awesome, June.

[Kuhlberg Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Kuhlberg]

Truly amazing!

[jsanaker Registered Find all posts View Profile Close jsanaker]

Magnificent Clouds

The picture of the Fire Rainbow is just incredible! Who took it? Can I get a jpg that might be forwarded to others? I am a photographer and I have never seen such a site with the exception of the Aurora Borealis which I witnessed in Northern Minnesota while sleeping on the beach in September 1980.

Joan

[June Pelo Senior Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close June Pelo]

Fire rainbow

Someone sent it to me - and I didn't save the mail so can't remember who it was. I'll check around to see if I can find who sent it to me..

[Karen Douglas Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Karen Douglas]

Fire Rainbow

If you go to Google, and type in "Fire Rainbow in the Yukon," you'll get several "hits." Some of them have different views of this unique happening. It should be noted, however, that a check with Snopes.com indicates that this photo was taken on 3 June 2006 - NOT "this week." But, that doesn't distract from its beauty! Thanks for sending it along, June! Karen

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

One site concludes:

"...According to an article on the National Geographic News website, this particular fire rainbow was caught on film on June 3 2006 in northern Idaho not far from the Washington State border. A fire rainbow is more technically called a "circumhorizon arc" or "circumhorizontal arc" by weather scientists. Les Cowley from Atmospheric Optics notes:

The term "Fire Rainbow" is not recognised by any atmospheric scientists. I first came across it in a British popular newspaper article after the great Spokane circumhorizon arc display of June 3,2006

To be blunt, it is a very silly and misleading name - the arc is not a rainbow and has nothing to do with fire.

A circumhorizon arc only appears when a specific set of atmospheric conditions occur. The display is caused when light entering hexagonal ice crystals in the clouds is refracted. But, for a fire rainbow to appear, the sun must be very high in the sky, the clouds must be high altitude cirrus clouds and the ice crystals must be shaped like thick plates and aligned with their faces parallel to the ground.

However, the claim in the message that circumhorizon arcs are "the rarest of all naturally occurring atmospheric phenomena" is unfounded. Les Cowley explains:

The arc is rare in northern and mid Europe where these statistics were collected. The reason is that the halo is low at European latitudes and only visible for a week or so around the summer solstice.

The USA is different, the circumhorizon arc is higher in the sky and is visible for a much longer period in the summer and for each day. While a complete arc (it's huge!) might not be seen very often, large and impressive fragments are relatively common and should be seen several times in summer in any one place. In the US and other mid to low latitudes it is maybe 'uncommon' but not 'rare'..."