White Fog Bow – Rannoch Moor, west Scotland
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Here is a remarkable image of a WHITE fog bow photographed at Rannoch Moor, west Scotland:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38063662
A great photo with lovely composition and exposure.
Laurence
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Here, released today (23 November) on the BBC News “Scotland” website is yet another remarkable image only this time capturing three phenomena – a white fog bow, cloud inversion and a brocken spectre. – and all in one image! Photographed at Rannoch Moor, west Scotland. Marvellous capture!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38076664
Laurence
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A further update on this remarkable occurrence;-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weatherwatchers/article/38080814/what-is-a-fogbow
Laurence
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It’s a first for me – fascinating. It should interest Fujiko Nakaya,, ‘Fog’ Artist i Newspaper calls her
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38083269i says her father made the first artificial snowflakes; she first became interested in fog after painting clouds. There are many media links about her.
Last Tuesday there were several standard rainbows in S. Hampshire, UK. The one I saw was centred over a tree with a dozen or more clumps of mistletoe – I should be so lucky.
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This fogbow reminds me of the “angel of death” that I saw many years ago while skiing in, I think the Swiss or French Alps. Our French guide, that early morning as we traversed a gentle upper slope high above a valley, suddenly yelled at us to stop. He was quite agitated and pointed ahead to a completly circular aura much like the fog bow. However where it really differed was that in the centre was a more bright spot and there was a tail hanging down from that central white glow!
As the only good french speaker in the group I was pushed to the limit as in a highly emotional tone he said that “in all my years in the mountains I have never before seen an angel. It is the stuff of legends (something like that anyway). We must be quick and very careful to get a better view.” We quickly kick turned in the middle of the slop and traversed away from the awsome sight. At the far side of the piste we turned again to face our angel. She was still there and he told us to look straight at it and ski slowly towards it. Then the real magic was revealed as the tiny ice crystalls sparkled and flashed past our heads. We seemed to be travelling down a tube towards this floating spectre.
You probably think I am exaggerating by now but this is what we all saw. At the end of this second traverse the guide shouted again to halt. We were all skiing towards a quite steep slope which fell away into the trees – not a very safe place to go. “Encore, encore! traversee vite! vite!” he called and sped away from the sight. We turned once more into the angel which had now faded a lot and was less noticable – though as we started to move, the sparkling tunnel was there. Fifty metres of skiing and the angel had disappeared. But we had seen it and the guide was happy, ecstatic even, and told us to gather around.
“Very dangereux. Zis ange lead many to zair det! Zey see her and zey ski and not see good, not see danger of edge. Zey drop over and get killed. Poof!” (well something like that). “Zee ange she lead zem to zair det. Zat is why she ange of det.”
A couple of days later as we gathered at check in to fly to our various home coutries we were in the bar and someone asked the embarrasing question “If they died how do we know they were following the angel of death?”
Nevertheless it was the most impressive high-altitude effect of light and moisture/ice crystals. It only happens in very particular circumstances and is, everyone assured us, very rare indeed. It disappeared because we had dropped a few tens of metres and the incidence of the sun – which was of course behind us all the time the angel was visible – had changed enough to destroy the special effect.
Does anyone know what it was and have they seen it or heard of it in perhaps another culture and by another name?
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What a beautiful story Alun. Especially ze french part of it!
Did he really belief it was an angel? I do belief “zis ange lead many to zair det” when you are skiing and enchanted by the sight, but the explanation is a materialistic one nevertheless as beautiful as such.
Apparently there was a lot of diamond dust in the air, That are tiny ice crystals that can form in the air naturally under the right (cold) conditions (like clouds do) or artificially by snow cannons. The sun was behind you and you saw maybe several kind of ice halos. It must have been a spectacular view, I wish I had seen this.
In the next link you find another example together with a good explanation of the phenomenon;
On this site you will find a lot more information about all kinds of halos and optical phenomena. I can recommend it. Have fun with it.
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My apologies. After I wrote my former answer I suddenly became aware that I must be terribly wrong. Lesson one for me: think twice (oops).
When you look the sun in the face you can see the kind of halos I mentioned and of which I gave an example. When the sun is behind you I can’t tell what you saw.
Google didn’t help so far. I found one example of an antisolar arc, but no tunnel-like phenomenon.
Nevertheless it is a fantastic story Alun wrote. I end with the same question Alun put forward: who knows what it was?
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