Rainbow clouds before the China earthquake?

Beerina

Sarcastic Conqueror of Notions
Beerina
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A few days ago at least two different videos have shown up on Liveleak and Youtube and the like, claiming to be films of smallish clouds that have rainbow colors on them.

They are claimed to be about 30 minutes before the earthquake (with the usual attendant implications about stresses in the rocks causing this or that phenomenon.)

I don't know enough about meteorology to know if this is just an unusual, if pretty, but nevertheless normal phenomenon, or a fraud, or, ugh, a real mystery possibly associated with the earthquake.

The two videos were different, so if it's a fraud, there's some decent work gone into it.

Skipping whether it was "30 minutes" before the quake, and near to it, is the phenomenon real?
 
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There are atmospheric conditions that can cause rainbow colours to be seen in clouds. It is something to do with ice crystals in the clouds. I remember such an occasion I saw about 10 years ago where the patterns in the clouds looked like the sort of rainbow effect you get from oil on the surface of a puddle.

Do you have a link to the videos and I'll see if I can find what they are called (different names for different conditions/effects).

Here's a really nice pic of one type:

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/highsky/nacr1.htm

And more:

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/play.asp?file=061406_sundog_sr&filetype=swf

http://scienceline.org/2006/08/07/physics-thompson-rainbows/
 
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There are a few meteorological phenomena, aside from actual rainbows, which can produce a rainbow-like spectrum of colors. A very common one, and the one I've seen most often, is called "sun dogs", or parhelia. Here's a Wiki article with an explanation and a few pictures. Below is a photo I took last November from my porch.

sundog1ah6.jpg

The photo shows a fairly common example. The colors of the parhelion here are pretty faint and might not even be noticed if one isn't looking for the effect. I've seen them with bright colors, also, vivid enough to be pretty obvious to any observer.
 
Of course this is likely because people see two different unrelated things and say they must be related. However any attempt to predict one based on the other will result in failure.

Last time I checked I saw reports that animals were behaving strangely before an earthquake. However no system has been made based on this or any other method to predict earthquakes. Until that happens we should treat such reports as speculation.
 
That reminded me. China was supposed to be testing a theory that snakes can predict earthquakes. I think there was a thread about this.
 
The videos should be easy to find on those sights, just search for "rainbow clouds" and Chinese earthquake, something like that.

They were low clouds with clear rainbow coloring on them, not high wispy clouds with subtle rainbowing. The former suggests fraud, but like I said, it didn't look that way, and there are two different videos of it.


1. Real phenomenon, but not linked to earthquakes

2. Faked phenomenon, someone goofing around

3. Real phenomenon, and truly "30 minutes" before the earthquake


It's the first two I don't know enough to tell the difference between.
 
I haven't seen the videos, but if I know the internet as well as I think I know the internet, they're videos taken at some random point in time, and somebody has just blatantly made up the 30 minutes part.

Happy to be proved wrong of course... ;-)
 
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