© Luke Hamill/The OregonianA circumhorizontal arc over Mount St. Helens on Sunday, June 19, 2016.
According to the Andy Bryant, hydrologist for the National Weather Service in Portland, it was in fact science, not magic, that painted the sky rainbow colors yesterday.
Also, it wasn't a "rainbow cloud." Instead, it was something called a "circumhorizontal arc."
Circumhorizontal arcs are caused by a combination of crystals in clouds and the angle of the sun.
Bryant says circumhorizontal arcs are actually not that uncommon in the summer in Oregon. "Sometimes you can get multiple arcs in different positions in the sky," he says, "depending on how much of a cloud layer there is and on the type of ice crystals."
"It's kind of cool stuff," he adds.
Why, then, have these things suddenly sprung up in the past few years? I've seen 3-4 of these in the past year alone, and never before that.
I know the answer, just hate when scientists try to pretend this stuff used to happen all the time. They don't go any deeper than a simple scientific explanation about what it is, and sometimes call them "rare events." Thing is, rare isn't so rare anymore.