Rainbow Cloud

The other night I was inside feeding Theo when suddenly the room turned totally bright and glowy and golden. It was so strange because it had been getting darker and I wasn't even sure the sun was still up and then—suddenly. That glow. So of course I ran outside to see, first setting Theo carefully down on my bed (which he somehow contrived to fall off of right as I came back in. Wiggle worm! But don't worry, these gotten-at-the-expense-of-an-innocent-baby pictures are totally worth it.)

When I got outside, I saw a huge looming cloud draped across the whole sky, and the setting sun was lighting the whole thing up yellow and orange and pink. Then the secondary light from the cloud was bouncing down and turning the whole world golden. The picture above is from my phone camera, and while the yellows on one side are kind of blown-out, it gives the best sense of that warm golden light being given off from the sky.

It was so beautiful and striking, and it was changing every minute. It seemed like one of the most dramatic cloud formations since Sam and I saw this group (which he drew here). Of course I got out the camera and took a million pictures (while Theo inched closer, ever closer, to the edge of the bed…) trying to capture all the colors and textures. And of course none of the pictures quite do it justice.
This gives you some idea of how massive the cloud was, though.
Or, even better, this.

My favorite thing was how you could see almost every color in the spectrum over the width of the cloud. I don't know why the light was being split like that (something like a rainbow? caused by water droplets in the cloud? Sam would know) but it made the cloud look like a spread-out, fluffy rainbow in the sky. So cool! You could see each color washing gently into the one next to it.
It got so red in this part, it was almost scary. All those churning textures within the cloud. I love the contrasts between the smaller wispy pieces of cloud in front, and the bigger, more solid cloud in back. It was so hard to catch the light on them just right in the picture so those wisps would show up!
And then, on the other side of the sky, another rainbow! Paler, but still vibrant. This looked almost like the rainbow you get from a prism. Or like a sundog.
That intense gold light faded pretty quickly, and changed to kind of a rosy pinkish light instead. That was pretty too.
More cloud-rainbows. I love the transparent fringes around the edge of the cloud.
And more! Red, brown, orange, yellow, green-gold, and then the deep blue of the sky.
So, so beautiful!

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