Thursday, December 21, 2023

Nacreous Clouds

We had some fine examples of nacreous clouds over Golspie today, the display starting around 3pm and continuing into the early evening.

The Met Office has a good description of and explanation for these rare clouds - link here - but, in brief, the clouds usually form in the lower stratosphere over polar regions when the sun is very low below the horizon. The ice particles of which they are composed are unusually small, so scatter the sunlight in a unique way, the colours being reminiscent of oil on water.

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