Double Rainbow With Supernumeraries - May 21, 2005

During convective showers on the evening of May 21, 2005, a brilliant double rainbow, with supernumerary rainbows, was observed in State College, Pennsylvania, at WeatherMatrix HQ. Photos of the rainbow (taken by me, WeatherMatrix Founder Jesse Ferrell) are shown below. The mountain in the foreground is Mount Nittany.

This must have been the "week of optical phenomena" because just two days earlier I had observed a brilliant circumzenithal arc.

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGES

One thing that seemed strange about this rainbow, and I've seen this in some but not all other rainbow photos, is that beyond the "ROYGBIV" seems to be a series of lighter then darker colors, as if several rainbows were present. If you exaggerate the Saturation in Photoshop, it shows up like the below. You can see there is a second, third, and perhaps fourth set of colors. Turns out these are supernumerary rainbows. The formation and colors are explained on the same website where I found out about the circumzenithal arc.