Blast away your winter blahs by taking in these seasonal weather phenomena
CBC
Even on the coldest and snowiest days and nights, our planet never fails to produce some incredible sights.
Here's a few of them you can take in this winter.
It's a freezing cold day and you look up into the sky. What are those rings around the sun?
They're called sun dogs. Although the etymology of the term is a bit obscure, the formation itself is easily identifiable.
The 22-degree halos form when the sun passes through ice crystals suspended in the air, according to Samantha Lawler, a professor of astronomy at the University of Regina.
"The ice crystals can either be up in cirrus clouds at very high altitude, or they can be very close to the ground," said Lawler.
It doesn't necessarily have to be cold to see sun dogs. Lawler said higher altitude sun dogs can develop in warmer climates.
"I've seen pictures of them in the middle of the hot desert, because at high altitude it's still very cold," she said.
Sun dogs are just one of numerous halos that form around the sun and moon.
A constant weather feature on the Prairies so far this year, rime ice is often confused with hoar frost.
While hoar frost forms on clear, cold nights through a process called deposition — where water vapour transitions to ice, skipping the liquid phase — rime ice forms when there's a dense layer of fog.
Water droplets that form fog freeze when the temperature drops below 0 C. If they freeze after they've landed on things like tree branches or light poles, the results can be breathtaking.
It can be costly. Rime ice can weigh down power lines, causing widespread outages, like one that happened in Saskatchewan in 2018.
These are like winter tumbleweeds. They're snowballs that are formed naturally — not by humans.