Breathtaking photographs capture rare 'fire rainbow' phenomenon (2)

Other pictures show the clouds lighting up the evening sky above a graveyard in North Yorkshire. In one dramatic image, semi-circles of colour are seen rising above the roof of a church.

While the 'fire rainbow' can appear in neat, circular shapes, closely resembling the arch of a rainbow, they can also spread out across the sky, as seen in some of the photos taken today.

The phenomenon, also formally known as a circumhorizontal arc, most commonly occurs in cirrus clouds but only when they're aligned horizontally.

Stunning: The effect, captured in West Yorkshire, is created when sunlight passes through tiny ice crystals some 18,000ft in the air

Dramatic: The sun's rays must enter the crystals at a precise angle to give the effect of the colour spectrum, as seen in West Yorkshire