Although this year only few haloes appeared over Germany, I could observe the second complex halo display on Mt. Wendelstein. In the morning I saw my first subsun in this year, which appeared in freezing fog. Later a veil of cirrostratus from a low pressure area over the Mediterranean Sea crossed the Alps from the south. Under those weather conditions, large halo displays can be seen very often. In my own statistics, 80% of all larger halo displays appeared when there was a southerly stream of air over the Alps, or under foehn conditions. And also this time there was a large choice of haloes in the southern part of the sky, which lasted for about two hours and a half. Between 10.10 and 12.45 CET the 22°-halo, a bright upper tangent arc and a faint Parry arc, both sundogs with Lowitz arcs, the parhelic circle, an almost complete supralateral arc, a faint infralateral arc on the right side, and a complete sun pillar were visible. Unfortunately, the haloes appeared only over a small area on the northern rim of the Alps. So except of me, only my husband who was down in the valley at that time, could enjoy similar haloes.
By Claudia Hinz
Very nice image of this complex display, Claudia!
ReplyDeletePerhaps one of the reasons that such great displays occur in foehn-conditions is that often all low- and mid-level clouds dissappear because of drying out of the lowest kilometers in the troposphere: that is, only the upper clouds remain! But of course it's also possible that in such southerly flows the cristallography becomes just perfect for such complex displays.
That's a really pretty display, Claudia. Sometimes I envy you a bit for Mt. Wendelstein :)
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