• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Rainbow Cloud Formation Visible Over British Isles

SimonBurchell said:
New rainbow clouds reported on the BBC, they look pretty amazing:

Rare 'rainbow cloud' spotted in UK skies

Residents in Scotland were amazed by a rare sight in the sky on Tuesday evening.

Looking like a "portal to the next dimension" or possibly a spaceship, the shimmering colours of nacreous cloud were spotted.

One of the highest clouds in our atmosphere, they are often referred to as "mother-of-pearl", and are rarely spotted in the UK because of the exceptional conditions needed.

Nacreous cloud form in very cold conditions over polar regions and within the stratosphere, around 12-19 miles (19-31km) high, for above our normal clouds.

BBC Weather Watcher SazzyJ "spotted this cloud iridescence from our garden in Edinburgh late afternoon. We'd never seen anything like it before".

"A portal to the next dimension" said Weather Watcher SkyWatcher.

Another commented "Brief, eerie and bright cloud illumination at sunset this evening. Unsure exactly what. No filter, no spaceship."
Click to expand...
Managed to see this and get some phone pics. Will upload later.
 
gordonrutter said:
Managed to see this and get some phone pics. Will upload later.
Click to expand...
And here was my view last night.

PSX_20231220_183422.jpg
 
That looks right to me. The only time I saw one I didn't know what it was till they mentioned it on Look North.
 
For those of you who are able to keep-up with your North Atlantic Oscillations occluding a Madden-Julian front, I highly recommend Mark Vogan's weather channel. He is an absolute meteorological genius & ninja (be warned: when you jump in, you'll immediately wish you hadn't skipped first year).

The relevance here with the 'rainbow clouds' is that he believes this might again be a portent of another Major Sudden Stratospheric Warming Event over the UK & Northern Europe/Canada/Greenland. Since you very probably won't watch it, I will reassure you that it likely won't be catastrophic (but it could be Storm Henry comparable).

Worthy of watching (but he is intense, so maybe watch twice....I know you won't, because you never read the Ikea instuctions when you get home, do you?).


For those of you who can't really remember Storm Henry back in 2016....it was bad enough to make some UK waterfalls fall upwards...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...rces-isle-of-mull-waterfall-upside-down-video

(Apparently that was also the year we lost Bowie, George Michael & Castro...À la recherche du temps perdu...no correlation or causation is implied, I just falteringly tried to rekindle any genuine memory of that year)
 
Last edited:
I went out with the dog at 3pm on Christmas eve, looked up and saw the rainbow-edged cloud. I thought I was seeing things! To the extreme consternation of the dog I ran back to the house to summon my daughter to see, and she and I stared at the sky for so long that someone came out of a house further down the village as they thought we were looking at a tree about to come down in the wind. Daughter took loads of photos and then googled it when we came in, to find that it was a rare thing! Absolutely beautiful though, there was one cloud that looked like a peacock feather, so bright turquoise.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top