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05/06/16 - Light Column and Rainbow

One of the nice things about living in the Pacific northwest is that we have lots of rainbows. Now and then we have other atmospheric effects. Recently we had a pretty dramatic rainbow and a light column. The latter is usually the result of ice crystals in the atmosphere at sunset. Those photos were taken looking west at the setting sun. If the sun had been visible from our vantage, we would have seen it at the base of the column.

A dramatic rainbow

The light column is the vertical orange column near the center of the photo.

Another view of the light column

Keywords: atmosphere, science