This Woman Vacationing In Jamaica Never Expected To See This Rare Meteorological Event

by N/A, 10 years ago | 2 min read

Beckie Bone Dunning‎, a tourist from Missouri, was recently vacationing in Jamaica and captured a rare photo of the sky. What she saw was a rainbow cloud, and thankfully she shared the stunning shot to the Weather Channel Facebook page.

Afterwards, she received a response from meteorologist Nick Wiltgen about the phenomenon she was seeing–he explained it was caused by iridescence, which is when the human eye detects different colors as water droplets and ice particles cause various wavelengths.

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So, here's the shot she shared with the Weather Channel:

Dunning captioned the photo:

"I was in ocho rios Jamaica last week, storm clouds were approaching.. didn't quite cover the sun yet.. I looked up and saw this.. never seen it before in my life."

Rainbow clouds are often seen in conjunction with thunderstorms as air is forced upward, cools then expands. Next, moisture in the air condenses and forms the cap-shaped cloud spectacular event.

She has since shared more photos of the event as multiple media outlets have requested to use her snaps for stories. The above is a different angle from that day.

Below is the final shot she says she was able to catch of the rainbow cloud.

As you can see, the colors appear around the edges of the cloud due to diffraction of the sunlight.

She was not the only person to see this beautiful rainbow cloud moment. Another Facebook user, Christoper Hill, shared his view on that day–he was among the clouds that day.

He explains:

"I was flying over Jamaica on Friday afternoon and believe I saw this same thing from a different angle."

What a beautiful world we live in. I guess you could say these two, and everyone in Jamaica that day was left on cloud nine.