this am i was driving into work around 700am
and as the sun was comming up the sky had this
orange color round look tube from the sky to the
ground . it almost looked like a water spout like you would see ina storm on a lake. what could this of been ?? the bue was so perfect round and
looked to be about two fingers in thickness but god knows it have to be bigger then that .

Russ-

What you saw was called a sun pillar. It is caused by the sunlight being refracted and reflected by ice crystals in the air.

-John

I saw they same thing and didn't think there was a name for it, now thanx to this site I now know. I saw it right at sunrise and the width was exactly the width of the sun. Was so cool I snapped a shot to show the wife and I would have shared it here but unfortunately my phone does not let me do anything with the pic now that I cancelled my data service

For those who may not have seen it: Wikipedia:Sun pillar (light pillar)

See also: Wikipedia:Sun dog

In Tuesday night's forecast, T.S. mentioned that there would be suspended ice crystals on Wednesday. John, Do you know where he could have obtained such data to make that forecast?

There were several pictures taken of today's event.


A Sun Pillar in Red and Violet

Atmospheric Optics website

THANK YOU JOHN.

Joe-

Probably not much to do with model data, just the knowledge that arctic air masses generally will have some amount of ice crystals suspended in them in the lower levels of the atmosphere.

-John