Funnel cloud & a wacky rainbow

It’s been a typical UK summer day at work today with a cool brisk wind, heavy low clouds and a fair amount of rain. I got rather wet because I had to go to another building and didn’t take my coat this morning :x

Late on this afternoon I think I saw a small funnel cloud. They’re rare enough in these parts that they get reported in the local papers. So I’m far from being an expert on them and it’s possible that it was something else. The cloud was probably a 150 feet off the ground and attached to the edge of a dark cloud at approx 300 feet above ground level. It didn’t show much rotation, but I think I saw it shedding a little bit of itself at the top so it might have been rotating slowly. It also seemed to be growing longer and shorter as if it was trying to reach the ground but not quite having the strength to reach it.

Then as I left for home I saw a rainbow, or at least what looked a bit like one. I saw three disconnected almost rectangular sheets of rainbow colours hanging in the air. The weird thing was that I couldn’t detect the usual rainbow ‘arc’ so the sheets looked more like an aurora than a rainbow. They weren’t auroral because they were far too low and the auroral predictions for this UK is zero at the moment.

Unfortunately cameras are not allowed on the site where I work, so I didn’t have the opportunity to take pictures for the experts assembled here to review. If anyone thinks they know what I saw from my poor descriptions, please let me know.