The sunset on Friday night didn’t look like it was shaping up to be anything particularly spectacular, but then I noticed that the real show was going on in the southern sky. This enormous cloud formation had not only dramatic lines but also a brilliant array of color from the setting sun.

This cloud faced the sun with a huge upswept front, catching a big chunk of the spectrum from top to bottom. As we watched from Hillside Park, it slowly faded from pink to blue as the sun crept beyond the horizon.

What’s neat about clouds like this is that they tend to get their color after the sun has appeared to set to those of us on the ground. With that in mind, you can enjoy a beautiful sunset, then turn to any really tall clouds in the area and take in all the colors they catch from 20,000 to 30,000 feet. Their colorful show doesn’t begin until the sun reaches the horizon from their point of view. It’s like two shows for the price of one…except they’re free already.