Rare double "red rainbow" seen over Lewis County's Highmarket area
May 18—LOWVILLE — Catching a glimpse of a rainbow, or even a section of a rainbow, feels like a special moment for most people. If you are lucky enough to see one from end to end touching the horizon or, even better, a double rainbow, that feeling will probably be amplified.
When Sidnee D. Holland, who lives just outside of Port Leyden, walked out of her family's log cabin to see what she anticipated would be the full spectrum of colors arched across the sky, a wide red band caught her off guard. The band — so high and rounded that it almost resembled an orb — was backdropped by red and purple sunset hues.
"We were so excited. We went out to see a rainbow and it ended up being that picture," she said.
"That picture" was captured by Mrs. Holland's granddaughter, Ayla C. Holland, 20, late Saturday afternoon at the family's lodge a couple of miles off Dolan Road in the Highmarket area of southern Lewis County.
Ayla initially noticed the rainbow through the lodge window and the two generations of Holland women went outside together to appreciate the view and get some pictures after ducking back in to grab a camera phone.
"It had changed colors from the time we first went out and it just kept changing colors," Mrs. Holland said. "It was purple and pink and then red. It was just amazing. I'd never seen anything like it before."
Mrs. Holland is not alone.
"Red rainbows" — especially double red rainbows — are a relatively rare phenomenon.
A normal rainbow with most of the spectrum's colors visible is created when sunlight slows down and bends as it goes through water droplets denser than the air, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Droplets act like prisms and refract the light after it's bent, or separated into its component parts — seven different wavelengths of color ranging from blue, the shortest, to red, the longest.
With all that bending and color separation, a rainbow is the result.
The second, fainter rainbow of a double rainbow is created when the light bends twice in the water droplets.
Normally, a "red rainbow" can result when that process happens around sunrise or sunset when the sun is near to or even below the horizon. The dust, mists and fumes in the atmosphere — that cause colorful sunsets by dispelling the shorter blue, indigo, violet and green wavelengths of light — also cause only the red wavelength to make it through to be bent and reflected by airborne water droplets, according to the World Meteorological Organization's online International Cloud Atlas.
Anyone looking at a red rainbow is bound to have the sun setting behind them.
In Highmarket on Saturday, however, the double red rainbow happened at about 5:30 p.m., long before the 8:19 p.m. sunset.
This rare rainbow's cause was also unique, having "more to do with clouds interfering with the sunlight and less with the sun's position in the sky," explained Katelyn A. Barber, a SUNY Oswego assistant professor of meteorology in the atmospheric and geological sciences department.
"The beginning phase of the rainbow looks to be a more traditional form," she said. "As more clouds passed through the area the total sunlight passing through was reduced and only the red wavelength was able to pass through."
The clouds coming between the sunlight and the water molecules were the likely culprit for scattering the shorter wavelengths of color, leaving only the red for the viewer's eye.
That explanation fits.
Mrs. Holland said it was still daylight but "starting to cloud up because it was raining" just as the colors other than red seemed to disappear and it was pouring with heavy wind when the red was at its brightest and the wide-angle picture was taken.
"It was really weird," she said. "It was just amazing to see in person."
