Today’s topic “Does it ever get too cold to snow?” reminded me of a coupla weather effects I ran across years ago when I was living in Alaska that I never figured out. Now, thanks to SD and the internet it makes sense (and that’s a rare thing).
The 1st effect is called “Ice Frost”, relatively common, and under street lights looks somewhat like the old star trek “transporter”. It always seemed counter-intuitive that the the ice crystals would continue to swirl in the air, now, not so much. http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF13/1319.html
The 2nd is “Sun Dogs” which is rarer and freakier. With the proper ice crystals in the air, you get the illusion of multiple suns on the horizon. I’ve seen three, but I don’t know what the maximum would be. http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/opt/ice/sd.rxml
(Sorry, can’t figure out how to get the url to behave)
***********************************8
Edited to fix link to Staff Report. – CKDH
So far as I know, there’s a limit of two primary sun dogs (plus the real thing, for three). But it should be possible to have secondary dogs, which would be images of the images (which would make them rather faint). And they’re not necessarily on the horizon: As a kid, I once saw one high in the sky, at about 3 PM.
Lovecraft, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, glad to have you here.
It is helpful if you provide a link to the Staff Report upon which you are commenting. While it is now “today’s” report and easily found, in a few days time it will be lost amongst all the past reports, and harder to find. So, providing the link to the Report helps keep folks on the same page, as it were.
Here’s a website I found with lots of info on sundogs, halos, and other funky stuff you can see in the sky: Atmospheric Optics. I can’t find a confirmation of more than one pair of sundogs, but there are multiple arcs and halos possible, whose intersections could appear sundoglike.