Listener Question: A White Rainbow
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It's listener question day here on the show. Hi I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. Here's a reported observation and a question from Edgewood New Mexico, from a Weather Notebook fan who listens to us on KANW in Albuquerque.

Early morning light produces a white rainbow at Arches National Monument in Utah. Photo: Rich Reid

"Hi, my name is Z, like X, Y, Z. I have a question. On the 26th of December, I saw something I've never seen before, which was a white rainbow. Could you explain that because I've been talking to people and nobody has heard of it and a lot of people were joking with me and telling me that I was seeing things. And I was, a white rainbow. I'm just curious, it was a real freak thing and very exciting and take care."

Yup, your right. It is a freak thing, it is exciting, and it is a white rainbow. I've seen one too, but just once. It was actually over the ocean, not quite the same climate region as you find in New Mexico, but still the same thing. I took a picture of it too. It was one of those rare days when I had camera and something meteorologically interesting actually happened. You can check out the picture at weathernotebook.org.

So, Z, I'm hoping the white rainbow you saw was in at least a little bit of fog, because if it wasn't, well it'd be something else all together. White rainbows result from sunlight striking fog droplets which are so tiny that they can not act as prisms, like larger raindrops do for typical rainbows. They just bounce back white light for the sun, right to your eyes. So, check out the photo at weathernotebook.org. Or watch from the window of a plane the next time you fly above the clouds, that's a good place to see them too. Our show is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory, also a good place to see white rainbows.