Todays Rainbow

Just caught this rainbow in the middle of a very heavy shower (with sleet) and gales...

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Nice pictures Martin. You got me thinking when you mentioned sleet - would a rainbow form in pure hail or snow? Would the hail particles or snowflakes defract the light similarly or would they be too opaque? Would there be sufficient water vapour to do so regardless of solid water???

Very good question and i dont know the answer to it lol however the abundance of ice crystals in the atmosphere might produce some great complex haloes and sundogs around the sun! Will have to watch out for 'snow bows' then. Watch for moon bows at night!

The weather is getting very viscious with gales and the temp is droping fast here and some interesting high level clouds that might produce nice atmospherics so i will keep an eye out for further activity. Looks like we are gonna get hit hard with winds and snow...

Nice pictures Martin. You got me thinking when you mentioned sleet - would a rainbow form in pure hail or snow? Would the hail particles or snowflakes defract the light similarly or would they be too opaque? Would there be sufficient water vapour to do so regardless of solid water???

Snow refelcts light so I can't see how it could produce a rainbow. Mind you it could cause some effects by back-scattering. Hail is neither opaque or reflective so I don't see how it could do any cool stuff with light. Mind you I could be talking rubbish!

BB

Neil,

Here is a good site for information on atmospheric effects:

www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/phenom.htm


Martin,

Here is a rainbow I saw about 3 weeks ago.

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Robert Greenler's "Rainbows, Halos, and Glories" has a picture on the front cover of a rainbow over a snow-covered landscape. It's a "trick" question though when he asks how could such a rainbow form; just out of shot is the spray from Niagra Falls and it's sunlight shining through these droplets that is creating the bow.

with sleety rain you could get a rainbow but never with a snowfall . . . the physical properties of the flakes mean they could not act like tiny prisms to split light into its constituent colours. A book I picked up recently is "The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty", which has wonderful photographs of the complex symmetry of snowflakes.

speaking of rainbows, I noticed one recently just 10 metres away. It was in front of an advertising hoarding so the rain droplets were falling very close by.

John