Rain, and an amazing sky

After two days of much needed rainfall and even a few heavy thunderstorms yesterday, the weather finally cleared and the sun came out today. Our rain gauge shows that we received about 3 and a quarter inches of rain since Christmas day! This is the most rain we have had here in months! Being in the midst of the worst drought in history for our area, this much rain is indeed a blessing for us. The grass and the trees all look green and refreshed, and for the moment, the creeks are flowing and are fuller than they have been in a long time.

-

-

I was outside late this afternoon, checking the rain gauge and just enjoying the sunshine, when I looked up at the bright blue and long wispy white clouds and the sky was -filled- with rainbows! I have never seen anything like it. There was a huge wide, perfectly formed rainbow in the center of the sky (nowhere near the horizon), and several smaller rainbows at different spots. It was amazing. I watched for several minutes thinking it would disappear at any second.. but it didn’t. The rainbows kept shifting and fading away, and then returning. I ran inside and got my camera, and of course the batteries were dead from Christmas, lol… I got new batteries put in and ran back outside, and the rainbows were still there. (Click any of the photos to enlarge.)

*

*

I didn’t have a lens with a wide enough angle on my camera to capture them all at once, but in some of the photos below, you can see two and three separate rainbows. At times, there were 6 rainbows visible at once, spread out across the sky. The largest one would darken in color and then fade away to nothing, then return even brighter. It was absolutely beautiful. At one time there were two rainbows visible, with one inverted over the other, forming what looked like an elongated oval shape. To the left of that, there was a large prism-colored rounded shape in the sky.

I have seen a double rainbow before, but never a half dozen rainbows at once, all turned in different directions in the middle of the sky! It was truly an awesome sight. The rainbows just kept fading and returning, and I watched them for over an hour! According to the time stamps on my photos, the first photo was taken at 4:27pm and the last one was at 5:21pm, so this wasn’t just a momentary phenomenon. In fact, all together I took 169 photos! lol I looked up for so long that my neck was stiff when I came back inside… lol

I had a polarizer lens on my camera, and adjusted it several times while I was taking the photos to try and capture the colors. The first photo below was taken with the polarizer turned to darken the sky to maximum effect. When I finally came inside and downloaded the photo, I was somewhat disappointed and frustrated that the camera really didn’t capture the vibrancy of the colors, and I wish I had had a wide-angle lens on… but still, you can see some of what I saw in the following photographs. At one point, the clouds looked like rolling ocean waves. Several jets also passed over during this, and the vapor trails from them just added to the drama in the sky. Click any of the photos to enlarge.

_{all photos have been reduced for smaller file size}

-

-