May 19, 2026 · 29 min · 14 segments
In this week's episode: cloud iridescence, weather experiments, CoCoRahs weather reporting, warmth of sunshine and outflow boundaries. Submit your Weathered Questions to weatheredquestions@gmail.com…
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Um, so I got a, a message, message from Kyle in Cedar Rapids, and I have to just describe to you what's happening because I'm not able to show you a photo or a video.
So he asks, "What's going on here, and have you ever seen something like this before?" And what he's looking at is he's looking at a, a layer of clouds in the sky, and it almost seems like the edge has a vibrant rainbow around the outside of it.
There's no rain falling, but yet around the edge of this very tall cloud, there's a vibrant amount of color.
So that is something that, that we talk about as meteorologists when you have generally, uh, pretty high up, thin clouds.
Um, so something, maybe there's, there's a lot of tiny water droplets or, or ice droplets, uh, ice crystals that are in those very thin clouds and you have, uh, sunshine or, or light, you know, generally sunshine, uh, going through them and creating the same concept as a rainbow, but cloud iridescence, I believe, comes from, uh, diff- diffraction-
... uh, instead of refraction or, and reflection, which are rainbow terms, uh, things that we are a little bit more familiar with.
But again, very similar process of light bending and, and light, you know, bouncing around.
We'll keep it at that because as we have striven to do for the last year, trying to keep things as basic as possible so that, um, it's easy to understand.
So light bouncing around through those, those, uh, water droplets or ice crystals that is creating essentially a rainbow in that very thin layer of cloud.
Um, so I got a, a message, message from Kyle in Cedar Rapids, and I have to just describe to you what's happening because I'm not able to show you a photo or a video.
So he asks, "What's going on here, and have you ever seen something like this before?" And what he's looking at is he's looking at a, a layer of clouds in the sky, and it almost seems like the edge has a vibrant rainbow around the outside of it.
There's no rain falling, but yet around the edge of this very tall cloud, there's a vibrant amount of color.
So that is something that, that we talk about as meteorologists when you have generally, uh, pretty high up, thin clouds.
Um, so something, maybe there's, there's a lot of tiny water droplets or, or ice droplets, uh, ice crystals that are in those very thin clouds and you have, uh, sunshine or, or light, you know, generally sunshine, uh, going through them and creating the same concept as a rainbow, but cloud iridescence, I believe, comes from, uh, diff- diffraction-
... uh, instead of refraction or, and reflection, which are rainbow terms, uh, things that we are a little bit more familiar with.
But again, very similar process of light bending and, and light, you know, bouncing around.
We'll keep it at that because as we have striven to do for the last year, trying to keep things as basic as possible so that, um, it's easy to understand.
So light bouncing around through those, those, uh, water droplets or ice crystals that is creating essentially a rainbow in that very thin layer of cloud.
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