The technical term for this is a circumhorizontal arc (but fire rainbow is so much more fun) and it occurs when the sun hits plate-shaped ice crystals in high-level clouds. This creates an illusion of a rainbow bursting into flame shapes.
Source: Amusingplanet.com
As if lightning wasn’t already terrifying enough, this exists: balls of lightning sometimes several feet in diameter. They move much slower than regular lightning but carry much more force—some have destroyed whole buildings. Researchers are still trying to understand what causes this phenomenon, but authentic videos have been produced documenting it.
Source: Howstuffworks.com
You know of rainbows, but moon bows are a rare phenomenon to catch and might make you think alien intruders are shining their light beam down. A moon bow happens when light from the surface of a very full moon hits clouds covered in moisture, creating what looks like a rainbow along the rim, and putting out a bright white light within the inside of the bow.
Source: Timeanddate.com
Light coming from the sky long after the sun has gone down might look like a message from above. But it’s most likely noctilucent clouds. Also called polar mesospheric clouds, these are atmospheric high clouds about 50-to-53 miles up. They’re made of tiny ice crystals that reflect parts of the ozone layer, making it look like light is trapped inside the clouds.
Source: Atopics.co.uk
One night you might look up at the moon and think it’s turned into a mood ring because it’s blue, orange or red. The color will sometimes be affected when the atmosphere scatters the moon’s light. This can happen when there is excess dust, smoke or pollution in the air.
Source: Hiwaay.net
If you’ve ever looked out at sunset and seen something that you knew wasn’t the horizon or the sky, it might have been the belt of Venus. The belt happens right before sunrise or right after sunset, and looks like a dark pink, brownish belt that sits right between the horizon of earth and the beginning of the sky. It’s the shadow of the edge of the earth reflected on the sky.
Source: Slate.com
These are called fire whirls but to the onlooker they’ll look like a fire tornado. They happen when intense rising heat and turbulent wind conditions combine to form whirling eddies of air.
Source: Livescience.com, wikipedia
These will appear like a specimen from “Ghostbusters” but are actually what happens when charged particles from the sun make it into earth’s upper atmosphere. The particles become “excited” creating a light display in the sky.
Source: Howstuffworks.com
Sun Pillars create the illusion the sun is shooting a beam away from the earth. These are formed when sunlight reflects off of falling ice crystals that come with thin, high-level clouds.
Source: Atmos.uiuc.edu
If you live in an area prone to storms, you might be familiar with these globular clouds. They look like little pouches in the sky, and form typically before a strong storm when the sky appears to be sinking. Essentially, they can have water or ice particles trapped in the cloud.
Source: Ucar.edu
Virga is the name for what happens when ice crystals fall out of clouds, but evaporate on their way to earth’s surface. This gives the illusion that the clouds are reaching down for the ground.
Source: About.com
If you’ve ever seen a cloud like this, you might think there’s been an explosion. But this is actually what happens when a forest fire, active volcano (and yes, sometimes a nuclear explosion) causes hot, less dense matter to rise quickly and cold, denser material to sink. The result is this, which looks like a smoke tornado capped with a fluffy cloud.
Source: Nasa.gov
Diamond dust is in fact a cloud, but it occurs at ground level so it greatly affects the appearance of the air immediately around you. The cloud is made up of ice crystals, and appears blue in color. It can persist for several days in polar regions.
Source: Atoptics.co.uk
Non-aqueous rain (in other words, rain that’s not made of water) isn’t just in fairytales. There have been reports throughout history of things falling from the sky, including jellyfish, birds, toads, fish and even parts of livestock. Many scientists believe this happens when strong winds carry such items into tornadoes, and relocate them.
Source: Fiboni.com
If you live somewhere where you experience the Santa Ana winds, you may have felt, walking around in these winds, that they weren’t just strong but also thick. In fact they are. These winds occur when really strong winds carry dense air from higher atmospheres to a lower atmosphere.
Source: Weatheronline.com
