• Monday-What'sUP January 24 - 08:29 pm

On two days, back to back, Patty Rheault was able to capture what seems to be a rainbow in the winter sky. Interesting enough, 3 years ago (almost to the day) we featured similar photos of what seems to be a winter rainbow, on Jan. 25, 2008. At the time, we had several folks give us a better explanation of this colorful display, that brightened our drab cold weather skies for a short time this past week.

Here's what was said by Capt. Ben Kilpela - Isle Royale Queen IV:
The phenomenon is called a sun-dog and it is common in winter. They are made by sunlight refracting through ice crystals in a layer of the atmosphere. As the temperature drops, water vapor condenses at all levels of the atmosphere. In winter, the condensing vapor freezes and forms ice crystals. This happens in clear weather only coincidentally. High pressure usually brings clear weather. And high pressure usually brings sinking air and calm winds, which keeps the crystals from being blown about. Enjoy your sun-dogs. They usually foretell good weather, though cold.

And Capt. Paul had this to say about them:
A great way to tell the difference between a rainbow and a halo is that rainbows are always centered in the sky opposite the sun or other source of light, while halos, except for a few rare varieties, are seen surrounding or otherwise near the source of light whether it be the sun, moon, streetlight or something else.

Thanks to Patty for the beauty and the Capt.'s for the knowledge today!

rainbow, halo, whatever ya want to call them, love the colors in the sky!

When I tried to post yesterday, I never could get it to go through so let's see what happens today.

It's so great to have BridgeCam back! Thanks for all the hard work.

That is exactly waht we saw the other day. I hope my pictures come out just as good.

Thanks, Ben. Apparently you made it home from Chicago. Lots of traffic from the game, eh?

Any happy Packer fans out there? This town, GB,
is really "ecstatic" today!!

Tom, see the what's up page, Im a Packer fan.

Beautiful prism effect.

nothing like ROY G BIV ! Although i did hear they took out the I :(

Neat Pictures.