Reflected rainbows near Spitsbergen

On 22nd August 2006 between 20.35-20.50 hrs, while cruising on the Isfjord near Spitsbergen, Nicola Boll watched these wonderful reflected rainbows. The lower bow is an ordinary primary bow. Intersecting it and curving upwards above it is a 'reflection bow'. The bow is formed by sunlight reflected off the smooth waters of the fjord. The upward going reflected rays are, in effect, from a 'virtual sun' the same distance below the horizon as the real sun was above it. Since rainbows are always centred opposite the light source, the centre of the reflected bow is up in the sky and the bow correspondingly high. In the picture enhanced by unsharp masking a reflection bow is also visible curving upwards above and to the right of the secondary rainbow.

Rainbow season started early with a twinned primary

While homeward bound from work a small rainshower started to pour in bright sunlight and I looked the the north and got a flat looking rainbow. I was ride-sharing when this happened and we pulled over and I got some photos and the bow looked unusual. Upon downloading the photos I applied unsharp mask and noticed the primary was twinned primary bow. This is the first rainbow for me this year. I would of expected to see one in the spring not February!

Extremely bright cloud iridiscence in Spain

On Saturday, February 10, 2007, Ramón Baylina shot these photographs of incredibly bright and colouful iridescent clouds at the Port of Tarragona (Spain). The pictures were taken at about 5 pm with a 200-mm-zoom lens."

More pictures are here

Mountain Mirage in Germany

In December 2006, some very prominent inversions formed in Germany. On two days mirages were observed along these inversion layers.

In the morning of December 15, 2006, Rüdiger Manig could see the miraged Fichtelgebirge from the weather station at Neuhaus am Rennweg in Thuringia, which was situated directly above a sea of clouds when he made his observation. The distance between the Fichtelgebirge and Neuhaus am Rennweg is about 70 km. The photograph shows Mt Schneeberg (1053 m) on the left and Mt Ochsenkopf (1023 m) on the right.

On December 23, 2006, Stephan Rubach saw the Alps main ridge in a distance of more than a hundred km from Mt Grosser Arber (1456 m) in the Bavarian Forest. Also he stood above a sea of clouds when making his observation, and the layers of air of differnent temperatures let the peaks of the Alps grow upwards in an abstractly distorted way.

Winter Mirage in southern Finland

The image was taken by Timo Kuhmonen at last weekend, on Saturday 10th February 2007. Place is near to Helsinki / Finland (Lauttasaari).

Timo was outside on that day hiking and taking some winter weekend photos. He had seen the mirage above frozen sea, distant island was "floating" on the air.

Temperature on that morning at his house in Espoo was -20°C. At the place where photo was taken, temperature was higher. Propably there has been enough of temperature differences in the air layers to produce this "winter mirage".

Fireworks corona

Wolfgang and I spend New Year's Eve 2 years ago on the top of the Wendelstein Mountain. 100m lower down was the "Wendelsteinhaus" tavern with a party in full swing. After midnight the party fireworks detonated at our level in front of our eyes. The flares illuminated some fog patches from the valley and produced greenish and brownish coronas. Some of the original flares could have been green but the effect could also be due to scattering from the firework smoke particles. We wish you all a wonderful New Year and hope that you see this and plenty more atmospheric optics phenomena in 2007.

Mother-of-pearl clouds in Finland

A period of westerly tropospheric flows in Scandinavia is continuing to provide occasions of Mother-of-pearl (MoP) clouds to Finnish observers. Several MoP displays have been observed just before the Christmas at different locations, in particular in Central and Northern parts of Finland, but also at the Southern coast. The photograph taken by Mauri Laitinen in Kuopio, Eastern Finland, shows the beautifully coloured details of the afternoon display of 23rd December.

MoP clouds are seen a number of times each winter in Finland, but displays as bright as this one are fairly rare.
Usually the MoP clouds are related to stratospheric temperature colder than -80°C.

Alien hunt on the lake Königssee in Bavaria/Germany

October 13th 2006 was a sunny and very warm autumn day, which we wanted to spend on a hike at the Königssee. However, we did not get very far because the scene over the very cold, deeply shielded mountain lake was entrancing. Ships flew over the water, islands floated in the air and aliens over the lake were hunted. It was really fascinating to pursue the fast changing mirages.

More Pictures: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Wendelstein Shadow and Rainbow

After the passage of a front on August 12, 2006, the sky over Bavaria (Germany) began to clear up and turned into a sunny mood about 30 minutes before sunset. This image by Christoph Ries was taken looking toward the antisolar point as Mt. Wendelstein's (1,838 m or 6,030 ft) triangular shadow emerged over the Wildalpjoch Mountains (background). Both ends of this amazing rainbow were visible. By clicking on the image, you may be able to detect the faint left portion of the bow. Note that because the image was taken at altitude, the bow's nearly circular composition is observed. From flat terrain, we see rainbows as semi-circles, but when not confined by a horizon, it's easy to see that they're actually rain-circles. The image was stitched from three individual images using "autostitch" and "The Gimp."

Mother-of-pearl clouds over Colorado?

Caleb Jones took this photo in Estes Park, Colorado (USA) on 28 October, around 3:10pm local time. The weather had been mostly clear on this day. These clouds were relatively far from the sun, and the vivid iridescent colors seem to be caused by very small droplets that polar stratospheric clouds have. But the edges of the wave cloud look more like regular mid-level waveclouds.

The 00 UTC 29 October sounding of Denver doesn't show unusually strong winds at high altitude, at 40 to 50 kts from the NW. In fact the entire troposphere seems rather dry on that particular sounding for lenticular clouds to occur.

I do not think this was caused by a missile launch either, considering the lenticular shape of the clouds.

I am wondering if these could be stratospheric clouds, or just some quite unusual appearance of lenticular mountain wave clouds. I received another report from someone else in Colorado who also took images, and am waiting for her approval to post them here as well.