Sundog

'Walked to the Library on Sunday afternoon- after my last training session on the mountain. The library was closed, but I spotted a bright sundog over Mammoth on my long walk back to the apartment. The thing was about 35 degrees from the blocked horizon and there was only one. I noticed the isolated rainbow several minutes after the last of the sunlight had left the valleyand it disappeared as quikcly as it seemed to have come.

Sundogs are a phnomenon which occur when the plate-like ice crystals in high cirrus clouds are shifted with the wind so that direct light is refracted through each crystal at 60-degrees. Sundogs can also form in low-lying ice clouds and generally become further from the sun as it rises and closer as it falls. Sometimes, when there is a sundog to one side of the sun, there will be an equal and opposite sundog that creates the appearance of a halo around the sun. They are said to appear anywhere in the world and at any time of day, but I have seen few in my lifetime and they seem to concentrate in early-spring for Kansas and Missouri.