I swear I have lived here 10 years now and had never heard of these until this winter. We sure didn't get sundogs in Texas. It's a pretty amazing phenomenon. Has anyone seen these around for the last couple of years? We had some pretty warm winters lately but this year seems pretty cold.

Several friends saw a variation on sun dogs this weekend, "light pillars". The same six-sided ice crystals cause faint columns of light to extend up into the sky above street lights and other bright spots in the evening.

This also reminds me of something I saw last year. The Mutant snowflakes blog. Since snowflakes only really form with six sides this guys made a blog of advertising over the last year that featured fancy designed snowflakes that couldn't exist in the real world. It is a pretty funny satire of science in our consumer world.