Sundog

Another “atmospheric river” is moving into Northern California and they’re expected to get clobbered this week – we’re going to catch the edge of it in SoCal, but it should still give us more than an inch of rain over three or four days. Let’s hope it’s gentle and doesn’t produce any mudslides or floods in the recently burned areas.

In advance of that storm, the sky was covered this afternoon with thin, high, wispy, icy clouds.

Looking toward the Sun as it was getting near the horizon, 22° of arc out, just above the roof and trees to the southwest, there was a rainbow-colored sundog.

Red on the sunward side, blue on the outside, there was probably another one on the opposite side of the Sun, but hidden by the house here.

There are some truly amazing images out there of extremely bright sundogs on opposite sides of the Sun, along with a 22° arc around the Sun. It’s all caused by the sunlight being scattered by the high altitude ice crystals, but watch out for fake and AI-generated images. It seems to be a favorite topic for fakes, probably because most folks don’t know what they really look like and get fooled.

When being awed by natural wonders, insist on the real thing!