PHOTOS: Saskatoon skies filled with rare double rainbow

If you thought you were seeing double in Saskatoon on Friday, you were correct.

This rare double rainbow was captured on film by Dr. Shaden Rislan Bani Yaseen. The formation of a double rainbow requires a very specific set of atmospheric conditions.

This double rainbow was spotted in Saskatoon on Aug. 30, 2024. (Dr. Shaden Rislan Bani Yaseen/Submitted)

How do rainbows form?

All rainbows require the presence of the sun and rain, and to see a rainbow, the sun must be at the viewer’s back, and rain must be falling ahead of the viewer, according to the Weather Channel

As sunshine breaks through the clouds and beams towards the raindrops, some of the light encounters the raindrops and bends it into different wavelengths that correspond to different colours.

Rainbows will only occur when the refracted sunlight strikes the raindrop’s edge at the exact angle of 48 degrees.

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The colours of a primary rainbow are brighter than a secondary one. Photo taken in Saskatoon on Aug. 30, 2024. (Dr. Shaden Rislan Bani Yaseen/Submitted)

How do double rainbows form?

A double rainbow is two rainbows that form at the same time. The first and brighter rainbow is called the primary rainbow, and only needs the light to reflect off the raindrop once before refracting out of the raindrop.

The secondary and more faint rainbow happens when refracted light does not escape the raindrop after being reflected the first time. Instead, the refracted light reflects off the raindrop’s surface a second time as well, producing a secondary rainbow with its colours reversed.

This double rainbow was spotted in Saskatoon on Aug. 30, 2024. (Dr. Shaden Rislan Bani Yaseen/Submitted)

The double rainbow had a viral video moment in 2010 after a video posted by Maricopa, California resident Paul “Bear” Vasquez was highlighted by late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel in a post on X, then known as Twitter.

Vasquez’s feel-good video, filled with exclamations like “what does this mean?,” “whoa that’s so intense,” and “Oh, my God,” became an instant hit with viewers. It has had more than 51 millions views. Vasquez died in 2020.

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