Just when you thought the Memorial Day weekend weather couldn’t get any better…
A rare phenomenon known as a “fire rainbow” popped up over the Jersey Shore on Sunday, providing a stunning scene for beachgoers.
“I’ve never seen a rainbow like this. What is it?” asked New York resident Packy McCormick in a tweet, which featured a picture of the amazing display.
“I was with my family and a few friends and neighbors, and no one had seen anything like it before,” he told AccuWeather. “People mentioned that it rained hard the night before, and that what we saw might be related to that.”
Two of the fire rainbows — known scientifically as circumhorizontal arcs — were actually spotted Sunday in Avalon and Ventnor. The beautiful weather events are caused by light passing through thin and wispy cirrus clouds and being refracted.
“These can only form with high cirrus clouds, because they are made out of purely ice crystals,” explained AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Samuhel.
“However, they can be seen farther north in the summer, since the sun angle is higher,” he said. “They are 46 degrees from the sun, about twice as far as the more typical halo that is 22 degrees from the sun.”
According to Samuhel, the fire rainbows typically come out on days where there’s little to no precipitation.
“Most clouds are made of water droplets,” he said. “The ice crystals in the clouds scatter the sunlight to produce the rainbow-colored arc.”
