This spring I have found myself outside wearing sunglasses and glancing up, and usually catching a rainbow cloud or two in the corner of my eye.

It’s been fun to point my iPhone up at the sky and take a picture of these iridescent clouds. Since the iridescent clouds are often very close to the sun, it’s too hard for my eyes to look at them directly. But the camera on my iPhone picks them up perfectly.

In the same ways that phone cameras captured the auroras so well lately, maybe phone cameras have also stepped up a notch in capturing colors in these iridescent clouds - colors which typically aren’t visible to the naked eye and are only partially visible through sunglasses.

Usually I’ve seen iridescent clouds appear around 11 am to 3 pm. The clouds have to be a little close to the sun. It seems the edges of the clouds must be thin. With these “ingredients” rainbow clouds will usually appear around Leadville. I hope to see them more this summer, though all the photos above are from spring of 2026.