PASTEL SKYFIRE OVER THE NEIGHBORHOOD

 PASTEL SKYFIRE OVER THE NEIGHBORHOOD

That glowing “oil-paint” cloud is cloud iridescence (sometimes called a rainbow cloud). It happens when sunlight hits a thin patch of cloud made of tiny, similarly sized water droplets or ice crystals. Those particles bend and scatter the light into soft bands—pink, mint, cyan, gold—like a natural prism. The fine ripple texture you see is a bonus clue: it usually means the cloud layer has gentle waves in it, which helps the colors line up and pop.

What makes this scene amazing is the timing: the sun is low behind the thicker clouds, so the bright edge-lighting creates contrast—dark silhouettes below, neon color above.

One little detail people miss: these colors often change fast. In real life, the bands can shift and fade within minutes as the cloud thickness and droplet size change.

Where you can see that:
Anywhere with open sky at sunset or sunrise, especially after a storm when there are thin high clouds (altocumulus/cirrostratus) near the sun. Great spots are wide suburbs, open fields, coastal roads, desert towns—basically places with a clean horizon and big sky.