What Were These Weird, Glowing Jellyfish Clouds Over Costa Rica?

Other witnesses said the clouds looked like something one would expect from the “end of times”, the network reported.

Videos and pictures of a very rare cloud formation with multicolored light have gone viral on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, with the hashtags #EscazuCostaRica and #ElcieloExtraño, translated to mean “strange sky”.

Jessie Montealegre captured some stunning footage of the incident over the city of Escazu, describing the event “as if it were the end of times”, which is a bit excessive, as it tends to be in most cases. We were just so amazed.

Another, Jessie Montealegre, added: “It was breathtaking. We had no idea what it was and we’d never seen anything like it”. “It’s like a sign of God”.

The phenomenon is actually called cloud iridescence and occurs when small water droplets or ice crystals individually scatter light.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney told MailOnline: ‘It’s a pileus cloud and that happens when you get a large storm cloud building up.

Eladio Solano, with Costa Rica’s National Meteorological Institute, also told the national news outlet Teletica News, that the iridescence was caused by water droplets and ice crystals refracting light from the Sunday .

The clouds could be seen from the capital San José and west towards the Pacific Ocean.