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The OC Register's Science Dude was hit with reports of readers spotting a "weird rainbow" in the skies above the region. He explains what people saw today is an " unusual atmospheric phenomenon" known as a parhelia or "sundog."
Rob Balfour, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, clarifies: "It’s the work of ice crystals at high altitude." A portion of the ring is visible because it is partly cloudy. It's similar, but not exactly the same a rainbow. They call it a "sundog" because "the parhelia appears to faithfully follow the sun’s position in the sky."