Imagine stepping outside at night and seeing pillars of light shooting out from somewhere in the sky. Naturally, your first thought would be: UFO! That’s pretty much what residents of Ontario, Canada thought, but it turned out to be much simpler.
Scientists attribute the appearance of light pillars to air temperature. When a lot of ice accumulates in the upper layers of the atmosphere, we don’t see them.
But when temperatures drop extremely low, these ice crystals sink lower. They become visible in the light of street lamps and car headlights, creating a truly stunning light show.
The appearance of these pillars south of the polar regions is so rare that people unaccustomed to such sights actually panic. However, in the Niagara Falls area, such pillars appear quite frequently, and no one there mistakes them for UFOs.
