Rare Rainbow Photographed at Jersey Shore

According to PhillyVoice.com, several beachgoers in Avalon on Sunday spotted a very rare "fire rainbow" in the sky.

Although people call this phenomenon a "fire rainbow," NationalGeographic.com says it has nothing to do with fire or smoke.  The technical term for a fire rainbow is a circumhorizontal arc and there is a very scientific reason that it happens...

When "the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon)...the hexagonal ice crystals that make up cirrus clouds must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.  When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus cloud’s crystals are aligned just right, the whole section lights up in a spectrum of colors."

Too bad the "double rainbow" guy from a few years ago wasn't at the shore this weekend.  I'm sure he would have loved it.