Nacreous Clouds

A trip back to my childhood home for Christmas inspires much anticipation. I look forward to spending time with family and old friends. I can’t wait to see familiar places, feel the tingle of the fresh cold air on my cheeks and smell the heady fragrance of a forest of winter pines. Another source of excitement is the night sky. I grew up on the Moray coast where the population is small so light pollution is minimal, as a result the sky can seem endless. On clear nights in winter the sky becomes so dark that it feels like a blanket of inky black velvet above us (rather than chilling thoughts of aliens this gives me a warm feeling of protection). Clear winter nights also support immeasurable stars. My childhood bedroom had a big skylight window so I regularly fell asleep whilst keeping half an eye on a theatre of twinkling stars. Sometimes, even the Northern Lights.

So, I headed north for the festive season with high hopes. I wanted to share the magic of the night sky with my southern based family. However, snow, rain and wind plotted against me. There were only moments of clear sky amongst the maelstrom. Not enough to appreciate the full majesty of a night full of endless silver stars. Too stormy for the breathtaking magic of Northern Lights too… but… it turns out that nature’s mysteries have not finished with me yet. A new phenomenon appeared in the sky. My daughter alerted me to it with sudden and urgent cries of ‘Mum…look…come and look!’

It was breakfast time (9am-ish in December in Moray). There was a beautiful glowing sunrise but what my daughter had spotted and I had missed was an array of clouds the colour of rainbows. I ran upstairs following her persistent cries and looked south east from her bedroom window. There in the sky were the most beautiful fluffy clouds in all the pearly colours of the rainbow.

They remained in the sky for quite sometime until the sun was fully up. Later in the day as the sun began to set (3ish - still December in Moray!) the rainbow clouds returned.

The beauty and magic of the clouds was profound and has prompted much thought since. The clouds we spotted in the afternoon were softer and more subtle than the morning ones. We agreed they looked more like mother-of-pearl than rainbows. In this age of instant information it was inevitable that we would reach for our smart phones - we discovered that such clouds are called nacreous clouds, coming from the word nacre - mother-of-pearl. We also found out they are rare in the UK, even in the north of Scotland. They usually appear in polar regions where tiny ice crystals, high in the sky, sometimes reflect light in all its beautiful iridescence.

We had our understanding. We had our scientific term. I prefer to look in wonder and take in the moment. We had few stars this Christmas and no Northern Lights but we had moments of unadulterated joy just by noticing the rising and setting sun. In years to come I will remember this Christmas for its rainbow clouds.