Random weather photos

Posted at 6:30 PM on July 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

We got a late start on summer but this week has been a heck of a week for cloud watchers. This behemoth east of St. Paul -- not expertly captured here -- could've easily led to more rear-end accidents on I-94 during the rush hour.

Deep thoughts while waiting for the traffic light to change to green: If rainbows only exist in our brain (because of the way our eyes interpret light), do they really exist?

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Comments (3)

There's nothing special about the way rainbows are perceived by our brains versus anything else.

You can write with an invisible ink that requires a black light to see, and just because you can't see them in the ordinary light doesn't mean the words aren't there.

Posted by Bismuth | July 22, 2009 6:53 PM

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I've got a PhD in optical physics, and I can confirm comment number one. Light of different colors really is scattered in different directions by water droplets in the air. A rainbow isn't a physical object, but neither is a reflection, the blue color of the sky, or a mirage. But they are all equally real phenomena. Our eyes are faithfully reporting what the light rays are doing. It's just that gasses or droplets, and not solid objects, are causing them to do that.

Optical illusions, as when a spiral pattern printed on a page seems to rotate, or you stare at a yellow spot and then look away and see a purple spot, are different. Those really are in your brain. How can you tell the difference? Cameras can take pictures of rainbows and mirages and blue skies, but not of purple afterimages or "moving" spiral edges.

Posted by Mary | July 23, 2009 9:28 AM

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That's a real Metrodome of a cloud!

Posted by PpFt | July 23, 2009 5:48 PM

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