Why settle for one rainbow when you can have two?
Double rainbow
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Tag Archives: Rainbows
Rainbow over Gloomville
Where I live, in Hawi, it rains 50 or so inches a year. Just down the coast a few miles the rainfall drops to 20 inches a year. So it’s not unusual to be driving from sunny climes and encountering grey skies nearer home. My wife and I refer to this as returning to Gloomville.
These photos were taken on my way home from work. It had been a regular sunny drive up the coast until I got to the hill up towards Hawi. Then I noticed the wall of cloud ahead, illuminated by a bold, but short portion of rainbow. I pulled over and snapped the second photo.
Moments later the rainbow had extended itself to form a bright arc over the cloud covering Hawi. That’s the top photo, and as much of the rainbow as I could capture with my camera.
Ironically, for reasons that are as clear as the skies above Hawi, Weather Underground has a strong tendency to report the weather in Hawi as ‘dry conditions will continue.’ This includes when it can be seen to be teeming down outside the window. The theory in this household is that the weather station reporting this information is either in someone’s carport or it’s operated by someone from the Hawi Chamber of Commerce!
Rainbow over Hawi
I was driving home late one afternoon, when I saw a rainbow forming in front of the gloom enveloping Hawi. I thought about stopping, but at that point, getting a photo would have likely involved the camera getting wet and the results being not that great. I kept going.
But as I neared Hawi, the rainbow strengthened and the precipitation diminished and I was compelled to turn onto the road to Upolu Airport, pull over, and snap some photos of what was a lovely, bright rainbow, with a faint but definite echo just above it.
Heading for the pot of gold
A snorkeler heads for the end of the rainbow. Alas, no pot of gold was found.
Kohala clouds
Driving home from work I saw this scene in front of me on the hill leading towards Hawi. It was such a striking example of the weather around here that I was moved to pull over and take a couple of photos.
The top photo shows the blue skies and scattered white clouds I’d been working under all day, and was standing under to take the photo. The gray band is wind-driven, low cloud being blown from east to west along the northern coast of the island, and blotting out the sun in this area. Under this band it was raining and visibility was poor. The cloud is channeled in this way by the northern shoulder of Kohala Mountain. As the band moved out over the ocean it became less pronounced as it dissipated.
Turning to my right, I took the bottom photo, a rainbow formed by the sun at my back and moisture tumbling over the mountain’s shoulder.
Rainbow around the sun
For my last response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright,’ (see more responses here) I had scheduled a flower photo. But a couple of days ago I shot this image, which is decidedly bright and comes with a story.
I’d been cleaning a vehicle and found a single lens from a pair of sunglasses. It was one of those with a reflective blue surface, which I thought looked interesting. As I walked away, I fiddled with the lens, moving it around, seeing the different reflections. Then I held the lens directly in front of me and saw my image backlit with bright light and with a rainbow halo perfectly centered around my head. I looked like one of those biblical illustrations in religious manuscripts or a stained glass window (a lot of those guys were gnarly-looking, too).
Looking at this image, I wondered how it was that the lens had created this rainbow halo and why it was around my head. But there it was, still there, still in place. It took a while before the thought filtered into my tiny brain that, since my image was reflected there, perhaps something else was, too. At that point I turned around, looked up, and saw this halo around the sun.
This one wasn’t as good as one I posted last year, but it’s the first I’ve seen since then and it’s certainly the closest I’ll get to being in The Bible.
Rainbow violet
The seventh and final installment of my rainbow colors in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ (See more responses here.) ‘Violet’ also happens to be this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme, which is what gave me the rainbow series idea in the first place. (See more responses here.)
My last rainbow spans the main highway to North Kohala. This is a good spot to see rainbows in the afternoon. It’s cloudy and wet toward Kohala Mountain on the right, sunny and dry down by the coast on the left.
This phalaenopsis orchid falls somewhere in the violet/purple range. This was another instance where I looked up the official RGB color values for violet and found quite a range of possibilities.
The final photo has a Japanese white-eye sampling the good things on offer in a Japanese aloe flower, backed up by a bold and bright splash of violet bougainvillea flowers.
Rainbow blue
This is the sixth of my rainbow colors in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ (See more responses here.)
Today’s rainbow arches above Lapakahi State Historical Park in North Kohala. Lapakahi was an old Hawaiian fishing village and the ruins give some insight into the life and culture of those people.
Second is a blue offering hanging outside the predominantly red and green Old Hawaiian Trading Company in Kapaau.
Third is all that’s left of the Bank of Hawaii in Kapaau. The bank used to occupy the whole building, but it’s now used as a senior center.
Graham's Island 