There is a strange phenomena that people in Michigan have been spotting lately and it's got a lot of people generally curious. I personally have never seen a rainbow cloud, or  cloud iridescence phenomenon before, but there are lots of people who have been sharing pictures, and most recently to news stations in Michigan. With the help of meteorologists, we now know what these strange "rainbow clouds" are and how they're created. It usually happens in altocumulus, cirrocumulus, lenticular and cirrus clouds, but how do they become rainbow colored?

Iridescent clouds happen because of diffraction – a phenomenon that occurs when small water droplets or small ice crystals scatter the sun's light. Cloud iridescence is relatively rare. The cloud must be thin and have lots of water droplets or ice crystals of about the same size. When that happens, the sun's rays encounter just a few droplets at at time. For this reason, semi-transparent clouds or clouds that are just forming are the ones most likely to have iridescence.

Fox 2 Detroit recently did an experiment to show just exactly it happens so that everyone can understand it. A photo was submitted to them from a family in Westland and when I saw it, the first thing I thought of was chemtrails. That's a joke by the way. Some people however are convinced that's actually what it is:

And here I was thinking it was the strontium, barium and aluminum being sprayed out of the airplanes.

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