Bathed in Red

Photo by Craig Johnson - August 2019, Cedar Falls, Iowa

A hint of yellow, plenty of red, and a layer of cirrostratus set up a spectacular sunrise. Rays from the rising Sun were reflected off the cloud bottom to create a brilliant reddish hue. Sunlight contains the full spectrum of visible light but when the Sun is near the horizon most of the shorter wavelengths of light are backscattered by ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Found above 16,000 feet, blue, green and everything in between are filtered out leaving yellow and red light. As the Sun climbed above the cloud layer the red and yellow disappeared leaving a distinct white layer of cirrostratus.