From light pillars to sun dogs: cold creates dazzling scenes in western Canada
Frigid weather has transformed western Canada, with sun dogs, light pillars, and other frigid phenomena making an appearance.
Plunging temperatures have brought out spectacular light displays, with both sun dogs and light pillars reported across western Canada.
Light pillars on the Prairies
Light pillars were seen in parts of Manitoba Thursday evening amid frigid temperatures.
The chance to see the phenomenon could persist into the weekend, with more cold on the way.
What is a light pillar?
"Light pillars appear on freezing nights due to the presence of tiny hexagon-plate ice crystals in the air," explains Weather Network science writer Scott Sutherland.
"As these crystals float on air currents, their faces act like tiny mirrors, each reflecting the light from any source directly below, and as there are millions of these crystals suspended in the air, the light from street lamps or signs gets stretched high into the sky as towering pillars of illumination."
They're most likely to appear on cold, calm nights when ice crystals can form closer to the ground rather than higher up in the atmosphere. And while they usually form around artificial lights, pillars can also form in the presence of natural sources, like the moon.
Sun dogs come out to play
After the light pillars came the sun dog - sometimes called a "mock sun" or, in meteorology, a parhelion.
It forms when ice crystals in the atmosphere bend the sunlight, creating a glowing halo around the sun. You're most likely to see them when the sun is near the horizon and temperatures dip below freezing.
Cold weather experiments
Some of our viewers took the opportunity to have some fun in the cold.
A video uploaded to The Weather Network by Wina Cameron-Reid features one of our favourite cold weather tricks.
The video was shot in Parkland Beach, Alta, while temperatures dipped below the -40-mark. At those frigid temperatures, boiling water quickly turns into ice and snow when thrown into the air.
This trick will work anytime the temperature dips to -30°C.
We also received this stunning photo of a frozen bubble, photographed by Jannie Haar in Bow Island, Alta, on Wednesday:
(Submitted by Jannie Haar)
The caption?
"It's cold on the Prairies."
It certainly is.
(Header image: Submitted to The Weather Network by Faye Campbell)
