it's cold!

As in -13 degrees the other night. As in highs of 11 degrees F for 4 days straight. Today it was twenty degrees and we were all like, "whew! glad that cold snap's over!"

However, extreme cold does have its advantages. I saw a phenomenon the other morning called "sundogs" or "parahelia" - there was a partial arc of a rainbow on either side of the sun. They're caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere. They look sort of like this:

The colors were much more vivid in the ones I saw. I get the feeling that they are really difficult to photograph well.









Click on the picture to see a page about sun dogs. Notice the website is from ALASKA.