Japanese Twitter user 麺類さん太郎 Menrui Santarō (@nyan__560) was very surprised when he stepped outside and looked up at the sky to see some highly unusual clouds.

Take a look and see for yourself!

These clouds scintillating in rainbow hues are a phenomenon known as cloud iridescence, but also called "fire rainbows" or simply "rainbow clouds" in which clouds passing near the sun appear to shine like a rainbow as the sunlight is diffracted by very uniform water droplets.

This phenomenon itself is not that rare, but clouds of this size and clarity are extremely rare.

Since ancient times, rainbow clouds have been said to be a harbinger of good luck, so it's particularly auspicious to see them at the beginning of a new year!

The post quickly went viral on Twitter, and has close to 200,000 likes at the time of writing.

As you can imagine, it elicited many comments, such as:

This photo, posted on January 2nd, 2022, surely made everyone feel like good things were in store for the rest of the year...