# @wychs_bloom on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DPQ3s67jqu6
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/63412123-wychs-bloom-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/d51fdb67df.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-01T10:40:11.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Christina Winters (@wychs_bloom) — https://gondola.cc/wychs_bloom

## Caption

Surfing under a halo in Montauk yesterday — the same storm sending us swell was crowning the sky with light.

When I was a child, I spent summers sailing with my father along the New England coast. He taught me to read the sky and the water long before I learned to read a chart. He believed you shouldn’t rely on a Loran until you knew the stars, and many nights were spent talking weather under the constellations. Those lessons return whenever I see the weather shift— maple leaves turning their palms to the wind meant a storm, a ring around the sun meant rain in summer, snow in winter.

Yesterday’s halo brought all of that back. High cirrus clouds made of ice crystals bend light into circles at precise angles: 22° for the bright inner ring, sometimes 46° for a larger arc. If you looked up, you could see a full circle around the sun with arcs stretching at the edges. Different crystal shapes scatter the light into these arcs and into sundogs — bright rainbow spots that appear to the left and right of the sun. 

The sky became a prism; and sailors have always read these signs as carefully as the sea.

In my book, the folklore holds true: cirrus clouds often ride ahead of a front. Halos mean change is coming. Yesterday, the halo above us and the swell beneath us were born of the same Atlantic storm system. Two faces of one force of weather. 

I loved being between both!

I still read the world this way. The black scoters that arrive at the end of summer, the ospreys leaving in August, goldenrod blooming to announce fall. Yesterday, it was a ring of light over the ocean, a sailor’s warning, and a reminder to keep listening to what the sky and the season are telling us.

#SunHalo
#SailorsWarning
#AtmosphericOptics
#MontaukSurf
#SurfingLife
#OceanStories
#SeaAndSky
#ReadingTheLand
#HerbalistLife
#NatureAsTeacher
#SeasonalLiving
#GoldenrodSeason
#OspreyMigration
#SkyMagic
#TwoFacesOfOneStorm

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 55
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 9

## Tags

readingtheland, montauksurf, ospreymigration, surfinglife, sailorswarning, goldenrodseason, natureasteacher, twofacesofonestorm, herbalistlife, oceanstories, atmosphericoptics, skymagic, seasonalliving, sunhalo, seaandsky

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