Cristina Hodgson
RESIDENTS in Malaga were treated to a rare phenomenon on Sunday when the sun appeared surrounded by a halo of light.
In recent months, Malaga has been the perfect setting for various rare meteorological phenomena.
In March, the arrival of a Saharian calima left the province covered in a blanket of red dust, then at the beginning of April the Malaga coasts were on alert for a meteotsunami, which turned out to be the worst storm in 40 years on the Costa del Sol, leaving every single beach on the Malaga coastline damaged to some degree.
More recently, the skies over Malaga have cleared up and, although they have brought the odd shower, they have given way to the sun and an optical phenomenon known as a sun halo.
A sun halo is an optical phenomenon that occurs due to sunlight refracting in millions of hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere and takes the form of a ring with a radius of approximately 22º around the sun or the moon.
The presence of a sun halo usually indicates the existence of cold air at high altitude and typically occurs in glacial places such as Alaska, Antarctica or Greenland. Also in countries with tropical climates such as Colombia or Ecuador.
The colour of the interior of the halo is usually a faint red, changing to orange and yellow towards the outside, with the outer edge in a whitish-blue, or sometimes violet colour.
Malaga was not the only city where the solar halo was spotted. It was also visible in Granada and Gerona.
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