"I Need A Weapon"

So, last night my girlfriend calls me up and has me look at the moon. I looked at it, but there were alot of clouds far up in the atmoshpere that blurred it. She said that where she was, about 20 miles north of my location, she and her friend could see a big ring around the moon. She wanted to know if I knew what it was or what caused it. I had never heard of such so I assumed that perhaps it was a planet behind the moon. She guessed that it could be moonlight refracted. Well, this morning I checked into it. She was right.

Rings around the moon, or Lunar Halos, are caused by Moonlight that is being refracted from six-sided ice crystals looming in cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere. The halos have diameters of 22 degrees, and sometimes there could be a second halo with a diameter of 44 degrees.

Lunar Halos also foretell bad weather, such as storms. Why is that? Well, the nature of high altitude cirrus clouds is that they usually precede an oncoming warm front by one or two days. Warm fronts are associated with low pressure systems, which are.... storms. It is believed that the number of stars located within the halo indicate how many days before the storm.

Solar Halos can also occur in the same manner.