The Beauty of the Cold
It is cold here in the north. January usually is the coldest month of the year, and we always get a few days to a week of sub-zero temperatures during January. With the wind those sub-zero temperatures get obscenely low. It's miserable.
But when it's that miserably cold, there's a sky phenomenon that I adore that makes it worth it, at least when the sky is clear. With the air that cold, any moisture freezes, and sun glories appear.
Now, the much more common phrase used for this phenomenon is "sun dogs1". But that phrase always makes me think of hot dogs, and it doesn't really convey how beautiful it is.
A sun glory is a type of halo, where the light is concentrated to the left and right of the sun, like two mini suns. Sometimes they look more like little bits of rainbow. It almost looks like magic, like a gateway has opened in the sky to some fantastic world away from the humdrum of life. They last all day long, usually. Whenever I see them, I'm usually grumpy about the cold weather, and seeing the glories brightens my mood because they are so pretty. And I've only ever seen them here in the north, because this is the only place I've lived where it gets cold enough.
Of all the states I've lived in, the north here has had the most things that have brought me joy; sun glories, the northern lights, eagles. Even though it gets too cold in the winter, and too hot in the summer, it is a beautiful place to live, and I'll be sad to leave.
The phrase has an obscure etymological history, with several theoretical origins, from the verb "to dog", meaning to track, to the Scandinavian word "dag" meaning dew. Scientifically, the phenomenon is called "parhelion".↩