"It was beautiful": Rare rainbow cloud stuns small farming town
The locals of a small farming town in Western Australia have been delighted with the sighting of a rare rainbow cloud.
The colourful weather phenomenon appeared above the town of Goomalling, about 130km northwest of Perth in Western Australia, on Tuesday morning.
Jenni Shaw was at her family-owned business when she got a text from a friend instructing her to look up at the sky.
"We all went out the front and had a look and there was some bright, rainbow-type clouds in the sky that we hadn't seen before," she told ABC.
“It was beautiful,” she said.
“But we were a bit like ‘why is that like that? Should we still be outside looking or not?’”
Ms Shaw said the rainbow-coloured cloud was visible for just a few minutes.
"It was not there long, just long enough for us all to get some photos," she said.
Jessica Lingard from the Bureau of Meteorology said rainbow clouds, known as cloud iridescence, form in the same way as rainbows - when sunlight diffracts off water or ice crystals in the sky.
"It's quite a rare phenomenon to catch in person," she said.
"It's the perfect storm of conditions: the sun's at the right angle, the clouds are not too thin and not too thick that they're being blocked out, and the sunlight has just created this spectacle of coloured light."
"It's an absolutely stunning photo."
Lucky local residents said it wasn’t the first time they’d seen the special clouds in the area.
“I have seen clouds like this a few times in my travels, mostly in the Wheatbelt,” Jill Lefroy wrote on Facebook.
“Pretty awesome seeing a rainbow with no rain!”
Image credits: Facebook