Spectacular double rainbow in the sky here in Baltimore yesterday!  I’d just come home from work and glanced outside to see a sudden shower coming down on my street.  So I stepped out onto my front porch to watch, and noticed the sun was out and brightly shining to my west.  Down towards the end of my street, you could see the rain coming down in glistening sheets of raindrops through the intense sunlight.  To the east, it was dark as slate. 

I can’t see the sky too clearly from my front porch because of the Japanese oaks in the front lawn.  But given what I could see…sun shining brightly over there though the rain…dark rain clouds in the sky opposite…I reckoned there should be a rainbow over in the dark patch somewhere.  So I stepped out into the rain to take a look.

There was…

Already some of my neighbors had come out to take a look.  First you saw the bright inner rainbow.  Then as it became even brighter, you started seeing an outer one.  Eventually, the two of them formed perfect arches, vaulting across the Baltimore sky…

So beautiful!  The white car roof in the foreground of the last shot is Traveler.  By then the shower had turned into a light sprinkle and I took a stroll through the neighborhood, not minding how wet I was getting at all, just completely enraptured by the intense colors arching overhead.  These photos don’t really do it justice.  It was almost like they were burning up there, like the sky had caught fire and every color hidden within it was now ablaze, so intense were those arches.

It must have lasted for almost an hour.  Then the sun began to set and the rainbow slowly unraveled, as if drawing itself down into the earth.  First the outer loop faded away.  Then the top of the inner loop seemed to break off, separating it into two half arches.  Slowly, slowly, the broken arches shrank from the sky, until only two rainbow pillars at either end of the horizon were left.  But the pillars of color remained for a long time, staying bright and fiery until the last of the sunlight faded in the west.  I walked up and down the blocks of my rowhouse neighborhood until there was almost no light in the sky, and looking down the cross-streets toward the horizon, I could see those fantastically intense pillars of color well into the twilight.  They looked like fountains of color erupting from the earth.  I’ve never seen its like.

Whatever weather pattern had brought us the rain, a blanket of cool, dryer air came along with it and the evening was perfect for getting out of the house and strolling around some more.  I left all my chores undone and just savored it because I know what the summer will be like when it finally settles in.