Bright, brief, spectacular

Staff Writers

VERY bright, very brief and altogether spectacular was how photographer LYLE RADFORD described this colourful phenomena.

Lyle saw the colours emerge, pulled onto the side of the road near Silverdale on the Cunningham Highway and had time to take one photo before it disappeared.

All this happened around 4.30pm on Saturday (October 18).

The colours shone in a cloudless part of the sky and may possibly have been a circumhorizontal arc, which is colloquially known as a fire rainbow.

‘Rainbow’, the experts say, is an incorrect description as rainbows are caused by light refracting through water droplets from rain.

If it is a circumhorizontal arc, it is caused by sunlight refracting through high-altitude ice crystals.

The one thing we do know is that there were many reports of hail storms around South East Queensland, late that afternoon.

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