Thursday 7 October 2010

White Rainbow

It's rare to have a morning when you see nothing unusual. But this morning's mist and low cloud was unpromising. Experienced hillwalkers would have spotted the signs that the bluish tints in the sky directly above could give us some of those special views you get with temperature inversion.
The thing to do was to get to the highest point as fast as possible even at the expense of wet boots being penetrated by the soaking grass on Thistle Hill. There we were greeted with a delightful sight: a white rainbow, or perhaps we should call it an albino rainbow. It's not easy to find out anything about this. Google is useless because it seems to be the title of a song or a group, so popular that references account for several pages. As one whose physics is lamentable, allowing me to just about understand the conventional rainbow, I suspect any scientific explanation would leave me far behind. So a simple description will have to do. A perfect arch, its whiteness was, as often with the colouring on the normal one, more dense nearer the ground; and at one end, after a while, it was just beginning to show a slight golden hue.

The cloud moved back after a time just allowing us some precious minutes warmed by the sun where it had penetrated, watching the progress of the burning back over nearby hillsides.



Other sights of the morning included a yellowish mushroom doubtless with only a Latin name; I suggest someone names it after some design of South American hat.

No comments: