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FARGO — Showery weather earlier this week generated several rainbows. Rainbows happen when sunlight and raindrops are present at the same time, so they will not happen under a sky that is entirely cloudy. Showers, most common in spring and summer, are the best medium for rainbows. Raindrops refract the sunlight, spreading its different wavelengths of light into the colors we see.
It is important that the sun be low in the sky because the raindrops kick the light out of the opposite side of the drops, which is why a rainbow is always in the eastern or southeastern sky in the evening when the sun is setting and in the western or southwestern sky in the morning when the sun is rising. You will not see a rainbow at noon because opposite the sun at midday is under ground.
