Weather Phenomena

I’ve found some really interesting weather phenomenon and decided to research and share the ones I liked most.

Belt of Venus:

This phenomenon occurs shortly after sunset or shortly before sunrise. A pinkish glow extends about 10 degrees to 20 degrees above the horizon. The glow is usually separated by a dark layer known as Earth’s shadow. The pinkish color occurs because the backscattering of reddening light from either the rising or setting sun.

Noctilucent Clouds:

These clouds refract light at dusk and illuminate the sky with no seeming light source. Made up of ice crystals, noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere. They can usually be seen in the summer months at latitude 50 degrees north and 70 degrees south of the equator. No evidence has been observed of such clouds before 1885 so they are considered a recent phenomenon. They form only under very restrictive conditions and are used as a guide to an atmospheric change. These clouds are commonly increasing in brightness and extent and therefore are theorized with a connection to climate change.

Mammatus Clouds:

Usually extending from cumulonimbus clouds, these clouds indicate a severe thunderstorm or even a tornadic storm.  The clouds are usually composed of ice but can also be a mixture of ice and water or just made entirely of water. Mammatus clouds can also form under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, cirrus, or even volcanic ash clouds.

Fire Whirl:

This phenomenon is rarely captured on tape. Fire whirls, also known as fire devil or fire tornado, obtain a vertical vorticity, or a tornado-like rotating column of air. Most fire whirls are triggered from wildfires. They form from a warm updraft and convergence from the wildfire. They can be anywhere from 10-50 meters tall, only a few meters wide, and only last a few minutes. However, some can exceed these numbers. Fire whirls can also uproot trees.

Non-Aqueous Rain

A common folklore states that a Spanish Catholic missionary visited Honduras between 1856 and 1864 and when he encountered so many poor people he prayed for 3 days and 3 nights asking for a miracle to help the poor people by providing food. Now fish have rained between the months of May and July for over a century. There have also been biblical stories of non-aqueous rain. Often only fish are reported to rain, most likely do to a thunderstorm or tornado sucking up the fish and then dropping them on local land. Although there have also been reports of raining blackbirds, spiders, large clumps of tangled worms and even an unidentified animal in pieces. What makes this even more incredible? Many of these were reported before airplanes were ever invented.

Fire Rainbow:

A fire rainbow is an extremely rare phenomenon. It occurs when the sun is high enough to allow light to pass through high-altitude cirrus clouds with a high content of ice crystals.

Fogbows:

Much like a rainbow, fogbows are created with the diffraction of light through water droplets. The difference between the two is that the water droplets in fogbows are much smaller than the water droplets in rainbows.

Triple Sunrise Illusion:

A triple sunrise illusion is hard to see when face to face under sunlight. It’s easier to see when captured on camera. This occurs from standard reflections or atmospheric lensing.

Morning Glory Clouds:

These clouds are low-lying (at about 100-200 meters high) and are very rare. They can only be predicted in one particular place on earth but can actually occur anywhere in various places. These clouds are accompanied by sudden wind storms and a sharp pressure jump at the surface.

Lenticular Clouds:

These clouds can often take form of a UFO but also often look like a stack of lens shapes, a single large lens shape, or even just an unusually long cloud. These are formed through air moisture that condenses from an updraft. This then is interrupted by a mountain, or any other large formation, and has come back down. After the air moisture condenses and evaporates and forms a cloud leaving the lens shape.

Kevin Helmholtz Cloud Formations:

This cloud formation is very unusual and seems very surreal. Unfortunately they are rarely observed because they hold this shape for very long and rarely ever show up. These clouds are formed because of shearing winds at cloud level.