Blonde By Nature

There is a YouTube video of a tuff of clouds that contain a light wispy-looking rainbow in no particular formation that claims to be taken 30 mins before the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China. Some suggestion that the type of rainbow was closely connected to the quake itself and likely even a sign of the upcoming event.

Check it if you haven’t seen it:

I would love to be able to confirm that this rainbow was an warning sign of the earthquake, but alas, science tells us otherwise. It was not a prediction, nor is it a cicumzenithal arc that Timesonline claims it to be. It is in fact a fire rainbow.

A fire rainbow - aka. circumhorizon arc - is a gigantic halo that sits parallel to the horizon (roughly 2 hands below the sun) close to the summer solstice when the sun is super high (22°-23.44°) in the sky around mid-day. Since it is so big that the only rainbow “bits” visible are the ones that happen to be on a certain type of cloud. To summarize: it is caused by refraction of light through the ice crystals in mare’s tail’ clouds (aka cirrus clouds)

Sorry to ruin the fun. But to redeem myself with a little humour I’ll end with this:

When I admitted to a friend of mine (let’s call him T) that it the child in me thinks it would be fun to believe that rainbows could be a sign of earthquakes he replied with “or how ’bout this: what about being at a nudie bar during the earthquake so all the boobies jiggle around”. Nice one T!

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