Sunset, Rainbow 180, Sleet

Sometimes you get lucky as a weather photographer. Such was the case yesterday when I left AccuWeather for the day. When I went outside, I was greeted by a spectacular sunset with cloud shadows.

Turning around, it was reflected in the AccuWeather building.

While taking photos of the sunset, I realized it was raining lightly so I started looking for a rainbow, which I found. I actually had a decent picture of it but I left it at home, so I'll post it tonight.

This is always something you should remember when photographing weather: Look out for the combination of rain and sunlight. Turn in the opposite direction of the sun to look for a rainbow.

I even got a shot of the rainbow over the AccuWeather building:

In fact this looked like it was a red rainbow, or redbow. That type of rainbow is caused by the red sunlight from the sunset. And to top it all off, it started sleeting along with the rain -- our first sleet this fall. If it hadn't have been raining too, could I have seen a "sleetbow"? I'll have to check with Atmospheric Optics (a wonderfully educational site which I link to below) and get back to you.

Photo Gallery user ilively, who also works here at AccuWeather, got some better pictures of the rainbow across town. I pasted two of them together to show the full extent of the rainbow:

The rainbow was in fact a complete semicircle, and a double rainbow also appeared. See ilively's excellent shot of that:

Why was the rainbow a semicircle (180 degrees)?

Turns out, you can only see a semicircle rainbow at sunrise or sunset because that's the minimum angle which creates the half a circle.

Is there such a thing as a full-circle rainbow?

Only if you were in a plane or on a mountain.

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