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Sunday, February 17, 2008 - 9:09PM 
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Dramatic high double rainbow over Charleston
I've witnessed better rainbows on the Great Plains, but this one on Sunday evening ranks in the top five of ones I've seen in Charleston. I went to church early tonight and went inside for a few minutes. When I walked back out into the lobby, everyone was outside gasping and pointing at the sky. With about 15 minutes to spare before the evening service started, I got in the car and drove the two miles to Fort Hill, expecting this notoriously transient phenomenon to either fade or disappear altogether by the time I got there. To my amazement, it remained steady-state when I got to the overlook, and stayed strongly luminous until after I was able to fire off about 30 frames on the digital camera.
Nothing less than a fisheye lens would have been able to capture the entire scene, so I shot two series of panoramic composites in an attempt to get everything in frame. I assembled one of them tonight (click to enlarge):
Other views:
The atmospheric configuration responsible for this display was late-evening direct sunlight at a very low angle, shining under a sharp clearing line behind showers moving over town. Here is the view to the west:
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