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weather-uk press pack

Ready-prepared articles on meteorological optics (rainbows, haloes, sky colour, etc)

• 980307 Weather and painting “Nobody looks up any more.” I remember my old geography professor bemoaning our obsession with shop windows thus, almost 30 years
• 980815 An overview of “lights in the sky” The best known is undoubtedly the rainbow but there is a huge range of other optical phenomena including haloes, coronae, glories,
• 981024 How the rainbow works “What skilful limner e’er would choose / To paint a rainbow’s varying hues / Unless to mortal it were given / To dip his brush in dyes of
• 981212 Rainbows and haloes Rainbow-like phenomena are quite often observed in quiet, sunny weather with predominantly blue skies, and not a drop of rain within 500
• 990130 The aurora borealis ‘Breathtaking’ is word often used to describe the aurora. Known as the northern lights of Aurora Borealis in the northern hemisphere, and the
• 000415 The aurora of April 2000 On the evening of April 6, 2000, the police and fire services, radio and TV stations, RAF airfields and weather centres, all were inundated
• 990515 More on haloes A recent correspondent was puzzled by what she described as an “upside-down rainbow”, high in the sky, during a recent spell of settled weather.
• 990717 Why is the sky blue? The simplest questions are the hardest. All meteorologists dread the day the little one asks, “Why does the wind blow?” or “Why are
• 000923 Measuring the blueness of the sky Cyanometry is a word that does not appear in my desk dictionary. If you recognise the two elements of the word you might be
• 991127 Purple skies Brilliant sunrises and sunsets depend upon pollution in the atmosphere. Not only does this include man-made material such as industrial effluent
• 030412 Red sky at night A correspondent recently asked me to explain the old country saying: "red sky at night, shepherd's delight”. There would be no colour at all in the
• 000521 A red rainbow I saw a rainbow on Friday evening. Nothing unusual about that, you might think. But this was a very special rainbow because it was pure red. I knew
• 000924 Once in a blue moon It has been a summer of widespread and long-lasting forest fires in the USA and Canada. Consequently I have been keeping my eyes peeled
• 010218 The exceptional halo display of Feb ’01 A large part of northern and central England was treated to an amazing light show in the second week of February 2001, and