A heavenly sight appeared over parts of Britain on Monday when a big white ring surrounded the moon like a glowing halo.
“Ring around the moon, rain very soon” goes a saying, and true enough a big band of rain swept in from west to east across the country yesterday. There had been another warning sign of imminent bad weather with incredibly intense orange and red sunrises yesterday. As folklore says: “Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning.”
The forecast of bad weather from the ring of moonlight often proves correct. This is a lunar halo created by tiny ice crystals suspended in a thin curtain of cirrostratus clouds about 7,600m (25,000ft) high in the sky. The ice crystals act like prisms, refracting the bright