Rainbow over Nanticoke, May 22 2008

It's been raining off and on the past few days. Yesterday it was off long enough that I was able to mow my entire lawn across town, but today conditions were unstable enough that I didn't even bother to start on my mom's.

As I drive home each day I get a brief panoramic view of the Southern Wyoming Valley, courtesy of the removal of several large culm banks a few years ago. This afternoon I saw knots of clouds and rain dotted throughout the valley with the sun shining through from the other side. Somebody's getting a rainbow, I thought.

An hour ago, that somebody was me.

This rainbow was huge and unbroken, and featured a nearly-unbroken and very visible secondary rainbow, with the dark Alexander's Band between them. I happened to take a closer shot of the brightest part of the right side of the rainbow. In this closeup view you can see the interior or supernumerary rainbows - additional bands of color below the "innermost" violet.
You can see the secondary rainbow more clearly in the close-up view below. Note that the order of colors is reversed with respect to the primary rainbow.

I can tell you that the raindrops that formed this rainbow were closer than the mountain in the distance, which is the Southern border of the Wyoming Valley...
...but behind the house in the background. Note that the apparent location of a rainbow is dependent on the position of the observer, and a resident of that house would not be seeing an extreme close-up of the rainbow, but rather a different rainbow with a right "end" in the forest beyond her house. (I actually ran into her as she walked her dog past my house. She also got photos of this rainbow.)
(By the way, there is no pot of gold in that house. I checked.)