It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the flaming meteor that flew across the Iowa last week, but there was another sight some saw in the sky Monday. If you looked to the sun, you may’ve seen a rainbow colored circle around it. Jim Lee of the National Weather Service says it’s call a halo.
Lee says the halo is produced when you have very thin high cirrus clouds in the atmosphere. He says the clouds are thin ice crystals and if everything lines up right, then the sun shines through and refracts off the ice crystals and produces the halo effect. Lee says a halo is a little more common than a flaming meteor.
“We don’t get them terribly often here, but you usually get several a year,” Lee says. He says they don’t last very long and you have to be looking up at the right time when the conditions are right to see them. Some wondered if the volcanic ash from Iceland could have caused the halo. Lee says that’s not the case, and the ash hasn’t traveled this far.
Lee says so far we haven’t seen any impact and he says a lot of factors are involved in any impact on Iowa. He says if the jetstream was right and the eruptions continue, we could see it impact sunsets. The halo was visible Monday around noon.