A rare sun halo appearing in the sky on Tuesday morning surprised and excited residents in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
For a few minutes residents seemed to pause and look up.
Bulawayo stunned by a sun halo
Some Zimbabweans took out their phones, snapped away, and before long photos of the glowing ring around the sun were all over social media.
“I was wondering what had happened,” Bulawayo resident Sicelo Ngwenya told The South African. “I quickly pulled out my phone to take photos because, to me, this kind of thing has meaning. My grandmother often said a halo signalled a bumper harvest for farmers, and that belief stayed with me as I grew up.”
What causes a sun halo
A sun halo happens when light passes through ice crystals high in the atmosphere, bending the sun’s rays and forming that circle around it.
Scientists call it a 22-degree halo, but people on the ground simply saw something beautiful and unusual.
According to The Weather Channel, “a mix of chemistry, physics and geometry are the main components for sun halos.”
“At high enough altitudes in the sky, the water vapor condenses and then freezes into ice crystals. As sunlight passes through the ice crystals, the geometry of the crystals cause the light to refract, similar to what happens when light passes through a prism.”
While these halos can appear anytime, they don’t happen often in Zimbabwe. It is no wonder residents got excited.
Weather experts say there’s nothing scary about it.
It doesn’t mean a storm is coming immediately, but it can be a sign that the weather is shifting and that there’s more moisture building up high above us.
Social media reactions
People on social media reacted differently. Some joked that it looked like a “spotlight shining on Bulawayo,” while others shared cultural meanings, saying certain communities have long viewed halos as spiritual signs.
The sight came during a stretch of hot and promising rains across much of the country, so for many people it was a brief moment of wonder.
