From My Nature Journal: A Rose-Gilded Wakeup Call

I woke this morning to a fairly rare celestial event that has provided me the inspiration I have been watching for to begin blog-writing again. As you may have seen in my most recent post early this year, I set this writing aside most of the last couple of years as I gave attention to another more personal writing project that was capturing my somewhat rare spare-time energies. Recently completed, I’ve looked forward to this opportunity to reengage my blog. 

The event is called a red monochrome rainbow, and I had never seen one in my life, never even heard of it. Its celestial rarity, of course, as with most celestial surprises, is all about timing within unique weather patterns. Having been a skywatcher practically all my life, it’s yet another example of the naturalist’s delight: one can observe nature for decades and then see something surprising they’ve never seen before and never will again. It’s enough to make an extrovert like me speechless, stunned even, and one of the things that keeps any nature-watcher vigilant in her or his observations. One of my first suggestions to budding naturalists (including my grandchildren) has always been to pay attention. There is so much to see in God’s good world. 

My coincidental waking today was just at sunrise, 6:13am, unbeknownst to me at the moment. Lying abed and looking out our west-facing window to check weather, it appeared pretty normal for an expected overcast morning, but then very quickly turned pink as I lay there. Going to the window with haste I was stunned to see a pink sky from south to north and what looked like a red rainbow portion through the trees. No time for clothes, I instantly grabbed my phone and scrambled outside in my bare feet and underwear hoping no neighbors would be up yet! (I’ll hear about it if they were!) What in the world? I snapped several photos, retreated in my semi-nakedness to the house, and it all then faded to monochrome gray within a few seconds. 

The internet immediately provided me the information ‘to see what I had seen.’ Red monochrome rainbows are somewhat uncommon, and happen only at sunrise under unique conditions. As you know, rainbows only occur when a bright light source is directly behind you and many small water droplets are directly in front of you. They are much more typically observed in the eastern sky later in the day after a passing rain system is heading east, with western sunshine refracting through lightly falling rain, separating the colors of light into a wonderful spectrum bow of color visible to the eye. Obviously, the same principle holds true in the opposite manner for early morning rainbows, but the early optics face influences not present later in the day. The reason the rainbow (and sky) appear red is that they show immediately as the sun rises above the eastern horizon, with the sun’s rays flowing through the lengthiest portion possible of the atmospheric sphere that surrounds the earth, far more than it would if the sun were higher in the sky; this lengthier atmosphere disperses and scatters shorter wavelength colors like blue, green and yellow before it hits the rain, leaving only the longest wavelength color, red, to show. This is, of course, why sunsets also appear red to the eye. Our atmosphere can do interesting things: a different kind of atmospheric selection and dispersal is also why the sky appears blue in the absence of raindrops.

But what makes a morning rainbow rare? (No, it’s not that more people are up at sunset than sunrise, however true that might be!) In the first place, the reduction of heat overnight and its related milder winds makes the atmosphere far more stable in the morning than in the afternoon or evening, and far less susceptible to the new development of a shower or rainstorm. So morning rains are more rare in the first place. Additionally, most rain systems move in from west to east with increasing clouds, which, moving east, typically blot out the sun long before a rain shower might start. Third, the raindrops need to be just the right size for maximum refraction, typically small and unagitated by wind. And finally, again remember that the light source needs to be behind you and the water source in front of you. As any statistician can tell you, every additional condition that might be required to make something happen incrementally decreases the possibility of that something happening; these several conditions combine to make the phenomena rare. And as you can see from the photo, a second arc was faintly visible to the right, making it a double red monochrome rainbow. 

It does make me want to set my alarm for sunrise, however, on days when morning rain is expected!

Ah, yes. When I experience astounding things in the natural world, I cannot help but think of a passage in the Bible that goes like this: 

Have you ever come on anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out. Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do? Anyone who has done him such a huge favor that God has to ask his advice? Everything comes from him; everything happens through him; everything ends up in him. Always glory! Always praise! Yes. Yes. Yes. (Romans 11:33-36, MSG)

I guess it’s because as I contemplate God as nature’s ultimate Artist, it is often as it is when I see something surprising in the natural world: I find myself very short for words yet very large in gratitude. God’s immeasurable qualities are like that as well, not only beyond words but beyond comprehension. It is in the contemplation of nature that we can be enabled to engage a degree of God’s vastness, even God’s love. You and I, all people, are a part of that beautiful creation. 

~~RGM, August 29, 2026