Everyone Is Freaking Out Over This Gorgeous "Fire Rainbow Cloud"

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Beckie Bone Dunning was on a trip to Jamaica last week when she saw the above craziness in the sky and took a picture. "I looked up and saw this.. never seen it before in my life. can u explain it," she asked the good people at The Weather Channel. And they did!

What Dunning saw was a "cloud iridescence," senior meteorologist at The Weather Channel Nick Wiltgen said. "In clouds, iridescence is a byproduct of sunlight being diffracted by water droplets or ice crystals, causing the various wavelengths of light – which we see as colors – to emerge at different angles," he explained. 

When said wavelengths meet the eye, they appear in a pattern of colors and voilà — a fire rainbow cloud is born! 

Fire rainbows aren't particularly rare, IFLscience.com explains, but they happen more often at certain latitudes. People in Costa Rica and Jamaica are much more likely to see them than in London and Los Angeles, for example, so it makes sense Dunning, who is from Illinois, had never seen anything like it before.

Thousands of people have shared Dunning's photo on Facebook and Twitter, so basically the moral of the story is that you should never laugh at someone older than you when she asks "can u explain" something Internet-y to her. For every time she posts a Facebook status that's meant to be a private message, she also may have captured a priceless moment in nature that will astound the Internet with its beauty. Lol.

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