dawn and rainbows

Well, I had a very atmospheric morning Wednesday (3 Jan). We took off for the airport a few minutes after seven, when it was just getting light. Very hazy and partly cloudy; as we headed down Bartonville Road the sky was showing a good deal of yellow dawn and the clouds were getting decorative. Tom said, "Sunset!" Crispin explained that it was, instead, sunrise. It kept getting better and better, with strong variegated gold light, and brilliant gold glitter on the bottom edges of some of the clouds, until the red-orange sun came up as we approached Flower Mound.

Then about nine, as I came back from the airport, I realized that there was a partial rainbow in front of me. There was a large low cloud to the north, with partly cloudy, partly clear blue sky to the west. Right at the left edge of the big cloud, stretching from the ground up into the cloud, was the left leg of a rainbow. It persisted even when the cloud moved on further to the east; some of the rainbow was in front of clear blue sky. I had never seen that. I do not think it actually rained, but there was a lot of foggy haze in the air.

Some time later, as I came on north from Bartonville, I suddenly saw a bright spot up fairly high on the large cloud, which had moved on farther east across the northern part of the sky. This oval spot was red on the right, yellow in the center, and green on the left. Shortly it extended itself to form the right leg of the rainbow, showing in more and less bright sections, sort of a dotted-line effect. It lasted, slowly fading, until I was driving up Carroll Blvd, almost home.

I think it was the first bow I had seen since the one Amy and I saw two years ago -- northern outskirts of Birmingham, I think. I didn't have a way to take any pictures Wednesday, so maybe I'll go find my picture of that one to put in.