Rainbow lost arc

Last Friday John Larsen was driving home on the way to the East of the city of Spearfish (SD, USA), when I saw ahead of unusual rainbow.

"It was obviously something not so, says Larsen. — I grabbed my camera to photograph it, and then increased the scale of the image". "See? The red band is separated from the rest!"

As explains atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley, there are at least two methods of such distortion of the rainbow.

The first is the influence of hot air. "This rainbow over Adelaide, Australia, a curved rising columns of hot urban air. However, next to the rainbow John Larsen no cities," says Cowley.

The second reason is that the mixture of rain drops. "Rainbow can appear distorted when there are differences in the size of raindrops along curved lines on different parts of it. Small droplets create a wider arc".

In this case more likely the latter. Larsen notes that the strong surface winds that day blew rain streams. This wind is able to distribute the drops in the strata, depending on their size, since small droplets are easier to blow than the large, and it could give rainbow her a strange look.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»