Fire Rainbow Seen in Jellyfish Cloud Over Texas

On Tuesday, a super colorful and rare light show called a “fire rainbow” appeared in the clouds over Weatherford, Texas. Not only that, but it also happened inside a cloud that looked just like a jellyfish floating across the sky. The whole scene was so cool, it didn’t even look real. You can check out the video of the event by scrolling down to the bottom of this article.

Now, a “fire rainbow” isn’t made of fire or a regular rainbow like the kind you see after it rains. Its real name is a circumhorizontal arc (say that five times fast!). It happens when sunlight hits tiny ice crystals high up in the sky. The light bends in just the right way to make a band of rainbow colors stretch across the sky like a glowing stripe. But for it to happen, the sun has to be in the perfect position. It needs to be high in the sky and shining through just the right kind of clouds.

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Rare Fire Rainbow Appears in Texas Sky

And speaking of clouds, the one this fire rainbow showed up in wasn’t your typical puffy cloud. It was a special kind called a Virga. That’s when a cloud starts to rain or snow, but the water or ice evaporates before it ever reaches the ground. When this happens, it can look like the cloud has long, wispy legs hanging down like a jellyfish floating in the ocean. That’s why people call them “jellyfish clouds.”

So when the bright colors of the fire rainbow mixed with the shape of the jellyfish cloud, it created the sky scene you can watch below.