Singapore was treated to a rare weather phenomenon as an apparent “fire rainbow” lit up the sky.
A rare ‘fire rainbow’ formed in the skies of Singapore on Monday for just 15 minutes. The amazing multicolored light ball appeared ‘out of nowhere’ on Monday afternoon in Singapore’s North-East District under a cloud.
It was so bright that onlookers even mistook it at first for a UFO as it loomed ominously across the skyline.
Fire rainbows – also known as circumhorizontal arcs – are a rare occurrence caused by light bursting through cirrus clouds at high altitude.
The sunlight is reflected through the ice-crystal clouds into a bright prism of colours.
Pet stylist Bernard Ong, who recorded a clip of the fire rainbow, said: ‘I have never seen such a beautiful Mother Nature before. This was totally something amazing.’
‘It was quite bright,’ he added. ‘Someone said it looks like a UFO, too.”
Childcare worker Fazidah Mokhtar said: “It started as a small orange circle and then grew bigger and bigger till all the colours came out… It lasted for about 15 minutes and it slowly went off.”
Student Wong, 23, said: ‘I was walking towards my bus stop when I found myself in awe of this beautiful cloud and the myriad of colours that were bursting out of it.
“This was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I literally turned on Facebook Live to share the exact moment that I saw it.
“I was feeling pretty down over the past week, but this immediately lifted my spirits.”
The stunning scene may also have been cloud iridescence. Both phenomena can be caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals, or in the case of iridescence, by water droplets.
For iridescence to occur clouds must be thin so the sun’s rays encounter very little water.
