Various weird anomalies take place in nature owing to peculiar activities of weather and are termed as weather illusions. Weather generally refers to the atmospheric phenomenon or meteorological conditions within a planet that prevail over a shorter period of time.

Sometimes such awe-inspiring incidents occur within the surface of the earth that it cannot be properly explained whether they are caused by unusual weather activities or are just the products of people's imaginations!

It has been observed that the prominent cause of these weather illusions has been attributed to temperature variations. Normally optical illusions resulting in false visual impressions take place owing to reflection or refraction of light.

The most common of all the phenomena of weather illusions are mirage, rainbows, halo, Northern lights and so on. The rainbows are one of the most interesting and beautiful of all weather illusory phenomena. A child learns about it in fairy tales but hardly understands how it is caused. A rainbow is actually an optical phenomenon which occurs when the sunlight shines through droplets of water or raindrops within the earth's atmosphere. The varied colors within the sunlight get reflected through the water drops and a spectrum of stunning colors appears on the sky thus forming a rainbow.

A halo is another form of weather illusion that is caused by refraction of light. A ring of red and blue is formed around the sun or moon when light gets refracted through a thin layer of ice crystals.

A mirage is another phenomenon of refraction that is truly illusory in nature. The most common instance is the false appearance of water on a sultry summer day especially in the parched regions.