Several rainbows spotted around same time in San Diego County: This is why

SAN DIEGO — Several rainbows illuminated San Diego County skies around the same time this week, and there’s a reason why.

On Thursday morning, scattered showers trickled throughout the region. Light precipitation was felt from the coastal areas to the mountains, valleys and even in portions of the desert.

The National Weather Service said the conditions produced “an ideal setup for rainbows.” As explained by weather officials, a traditional rainbows occurs when “sunlight is spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets.”

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To explain further, the “bow” part of the word refers to the fact that the rainbow is a group of nearly circular arcs of color all having a common center, said NWS. Typically, we only see a portion of the entire circle, leading to the bow shape.

An example of this can be seen in the photo below, which was captured by a drone Thursday morning on Airoso Avenue in the Del Cerro neighborhood in the City of San Diego.

With scattered rain showering the county Thursday, NWS explained that “as light enters the raindrop, it is refracted (the path of the light is bent to a different angle) and some of the light is reflected by the internal, curved, mirror-like surface of the raindrop.” This creates the colors of a rainbow for observers.

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What’s even more spectacular are instances of double rainbows, or when observers can see two rainbows at once. This happens when not all of the energy of the ray escapes the raindrop after it is reflected once, according to NWS.

“A part of the ray is reflected again, and travels along a different path inside the drop to emerge from the drop at a different angle,” weather officials explained. Put simply, the secondary rainbow arises from two internal reflections.

On Thursday, a double rainbow was captured in the unincorporated area of both Borrego Springs and San Diego, as seen in the images below.

Though no San Diegans reported finding gold this week, an Irish saying asserting one is likely to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the rain brought a light show to some early risers throughout the region.

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