Nacreous clouds delivered by storm Pia

 This was the sky at sunrise today, when we were treated to a magical display of opalescent nacreous clouds, with rainbow colours caused by light refracted through minute ice crystals. Then, at sunset .....

..... a repeat performance. A memorable day of cloudwatching.

Strange Cloud

Clashing warm and cold air masses have created some strange cloud formations here in the north east over the last few days. This strange pile-of-plates drifted past our window a couple of days ago. Do clouds like this have a name?

Rainbow Cirrus a.k.a. Fire Rainbow

We spotted this amazing cloud, which I believe is called rainbow cirrus, also known as a fire rainbow, very late in the afternoon over the lower end of Weardale in County Durham. Apparently the rainbow is cause by refraction of sunlight by tiny ice crystals in very high altitude cirrus. I've only ever seen it once before, also during an extremely cold period of weather. Quite magical. It only lasted for a couple of minutes.