Upside down rainbow

Officially, it’s a circumzenithal arc. To the rest of us, it’s an upside-down rainbow.

But whatever you call it, it is an extremely rare phenomenon that is rarely seen in the skies of Britain, usually confined to the North and South Poles.

However, one lucky family spotted an arc over their Black Country home – and managed to capture it on camera.

The unusual sight was caught by quick-thinking seven-year-old Lauren Wright as she watched it with her parents in Bloxwich, West Midlands.

Reverse rainbows are hard to spot and usually last for just a matter of moments, with people having to be in the right place at the right time to see one.

They are the result of freak atmospheric conditions, caused by light shining through tiny ice crystals in the clouds, rather than through raindrops like normal rainbows.

Sunlight must shine at a specific angle through the clouds and the ice particles must be lined up together in the right direction to refract the light.

They are much brighter and more concentrated than a normal rainbow with the colours in reverse order, violet on top and red at the bottom.

The arcs usually vanish quickly because the cirrus clouds containing the ice crystals shift their position.

Unlike a traditional rainbow, the sky has to be clear of rain and low level clouds for a circumzenithal arc to be seen.

They only appear when sunlight shines at a specific angle through a thin veil of wispy clouds at a height of around 20,000 to 25,000 feet. At this altitude the cirrus clouds are made of tiny ice crystals.

John Hammond, forecaster for the Met Office, said: “You can get them at any time of year and it doesn’t depend on rain.

“A few different things must be in place and the person seeing it must be at the right place at the right time. They generally don’t last for very long.

“Circumzenithal arcs are seen relatively rarely in Britain because they can only be seen at the right combination of atmospheric conditions.

“Visibility of these arcs can vary greatly with someone 10 miles away not being able to see it.”

Young photographer Lauren, who attends Walsall’s Busill Jones Primary School, spotted the arc with her mother Claire Robbins and father Stuart Wright.

They saw the upside-down rainbow on Saturday evening. Miss Robbins said: “My partner and daughter spotted it at 7.16pm.

“Stuart said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing and shouted to me to have a look.

“It was only there for a couple of minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The 36-year-old assistant manager for Superdrug said her daughter managed to take a few photos of the circumzenithal arc before it disappeared.

Miss Robbins adds: “It was really exciting but weird. It hadn’t been raining at all and it was quite low in the sky.”

Meteorologists say clouds must be convex to the sun to form a circumzenithal arc, with the ice particles lined up together in the right direction to refract the light.

This results in the sunlight bouncing off the ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up and bending the sunlight like a glass prism into a spectrum of colour.

They are generally only seen in the Arctic Circle.

Known as a “smile in the sky”, the last circumzenithal arc captured on film was in Leicestershire last month.

Antique dealer William Freeman, aged 35, caught a quick glimpse of an arc in his back garden on a blazing summer’s day.

“I had just finished dinner when I went outside and saw what appeared to be an upside-down rainbow,” he said.

“Everyone was stunned – I’ve never seen anything like it.

“It was a very bizarre sight on such a lovely sunny evening with no rain.

“I grabbed my phone and took a photo but within minutes it had completely disappeared.

“I feel very lucky to have seen this weather wonder and to have captured a picture of it