Super rare and beautiful rainbow cloud appears in China and astonishes everyone

There was a supernatural feel about the whole thing.

Aug. 29, 2022

Super rare and beautiful rainbow cloud appears in China and astonishes everyone

An extremely rare weather phenomenon that occurred in China recently had people completely dumbfounded by its appearance.

The strange looking rarity – a massive rainbow cloud in the sky – was filmed in the city of Haikou, Hainan Province on August 21, 2022, and it's no wonder that some onlookers were left feeling a sense of the surreal and supernatural.

I mean, just look at the thing:

Looks almost apocalyptical in a beautiful sort of way, doesn't it?

Well, lucky for those fearing an end-of-times scenario, there's a perfectly valid scientific explanation for the rainbow cloud, which experts refer to as a pileus or scarf cloud.

A pileus cloud is formed through a thunderstorm's updraft, creating a smooth cloud that sits atop a growing cumulus or cumulonimbus cloud. When sun rays hit the millions of tiny ice crystals or water droplets within the cloud, light is diffracted and produces the vivid colors of the rainbow as shown in the videos and images you see above.

Though mesmerizing, these clouds are often short-lived, with the main cloud underneath eventually rising up via the process of convection to absorb the rainbow cloud above.

Rainbow colored scarf cloud over Haikou city in China pic.twitter.com/ewKmQjsiIE — Sunlit Rain (@Earthlings10m) August 26, 2022

Pileus clouds have been noted as being indicators of severe weather, but can also be found forming above mountains, ash clouds, pyrocumulus clouds (from errupting volcanoes), and some mushroom clouds following intense nuclear explosions.

However, not all pileus clouds yield beautiful rainbow effects like the one seen in Haikou, so we can definitely consider the residents pretty lucky to have seen such an amazing spectacle up close.