Snow Rainbows

There is some controversy over whether or not the snow rainbow weather phenomenon even exists. I saw this photo posted on FB by my nephew’s wife, and even though the colors aren't clear they are there, hence it looked like a rainbow to her and I concur. So I dove into the snow rainbow discussion, without so much as a pair of cross country skis, and there are a couple of things that drift to mind, snow what I mean? Many weather people mention that in order for light to be refracted into the color spectrum and form a rainbow it must pass through a rounded raindrop. Snowflakes do not have the necessary curves, but then neither do the prisms I used when I taught elementary school science. Because snowflakes have so many surfaces the color refraction doesn't show, the light is purportedly too scrambled, but there is a thing called a parahelia that is similar to a rainbow when sunlight is refracted through snow or ice crystals in cirrus clouds. The word parahelia showing up red wiggly, underlined by the spell check that is part of my computer’s software programming makes me wonder about parahelia’s validity as a word. There’s no such underline under snow rainbow so why not just call it what it is? Even in South GA you can’t miss the fact that there has been a lot of snow in the US lately so if I were you, living in the snowy climes, I’d be on the lookout for a snow rainbow!