Beautiful Finish To A Rainy Day

We had a very nice end to our day yesterday in the Rochester, NY area. The day started with fairly heavy rain and kept going through out much of the day. I had just finished work. Went down stairs and got a workout in, had dinner and then sat on the couch. That's when my wife text me as she was heading home. She said "There's a pretty rainbow outside work. Maybe you can see it from home. It's a full one too".

She sent me this amazing picture.

Beautiful sunset as the clouds started to break up after a full day of rain. Giving way to this view. I went outside and was also able to see the rainbow as well.

My pictures didn't turn out as nice as hers did so I'm only posting her photos. It was actually a double rainbow. She took a second picture. You can see the second rainbow in the right side of this image.

So something interesting about rainbows and especially double rainbows for that matter. Is that in a primary rainbow, the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner side. This rainbow is caused by light being refracted when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it. 

In a double rainbow as seen above, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and has the order of its colors reversed, with red on the inner side of the arc. This is caused by the light being reflected twice on the inside of the droplet before leaving it. Kind of like a mirror image of the primary rainbow. Pretty cool!

The rainbow made it way across the Internet on our Rochester, NY reddit page. So many people were posting pictures. It was interesting seeing everyone's perception of it. And really nice how many people were talking about it. The sense of community in the Rochester, area is really nice sometimes.

Aside from the rainbow that ended up stealing the show. I wanted to share a few autumn pictures from our backyard.

Autumn in NY, is always a nice time of year. Especially on clear days with cool temperatures. Leaves are about at peak here now. More and more leaves falling each day. Lots pumpkins on peoples steps and bales of hay in their yards.

Trees from my backyard turning a full deep red / maroon color.

Crisp yellow color leaves on a birch tree draped over blue skies.

So why do leaves change color in the fall? Not that we're complaining about it. Well, it's actually a pretty complex process. Leaves change color as a part of their natural life cycle. During the growing season, leaves act as food factories for trees, capturing sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar. A chemical called chlorophyll, which absorbs light energy, is responsible for making this happen. It is also the reason why most leaves are green through out the summer season.

In the fall, shorter days and cooler temperatures trigger the leaves to stop their food making process. As the chlorophyll breaks down, the green color disappears from the leaf surface. Yellow and orange (two colors which until now have been masked by the stronger pigment green) start to become visible. These pigments take longer to break down than the chlorophyll does.
Some trees like maples, sourwoods etc however, start making brand new pigments, producing brilliant shades of red, scarlet and purple with the onset of fall. Often you’ll see these colors mixed in with the orange and yellow pigments, making for a dazzling show.

It's interesting how new information is always being made available as people continue to learn about the earth. I remember years ago thinking that leaves changing color was only because of cold temperatures causing the sugars in the leaves to rise to the surface. I guess my point to that is (Never close yourself off to new information. Continue to keep learning new things.)

I hope you enjoyed this post and these photos. As always I thank you for stopping by.

Thanks for reading.