Weather, rainbows and pots of gold: What's at work here?

Seeing a rainbow often invokes a flood of positive emotions, with people citing God, good luck, the supernatural, the afterlife and more. 

Rainbows are often associated with the mythical folklore of many cultures around the world.

"Rainbows are usually positive symbols in myths and legends," said the National Geographic Society. 

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In grade school, many students learned that Sir Isaac Newton listed seven colors of the rainbow. 

In order from top to bottom, they are: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. (Some children were taught to use the moniker Roy G Biv to help them recall the colors of a rainbow.)

A rainbow in the sky seen from the Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay entrance, Pacific WWII War Memorial, O’ahu, Hawaii, Feb. 2019.  (iStock)

In addition to the colors and the optimism rainbows usually provide, one of the most prevalent references to a rainbow comes in the Irish legend of the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow — and a leprechaun is usually part of the folklore. 

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Beyond the mystical and pop-culture references, there’s science behind the appearance of the colorful natural phenomena. 

Fox New Digital spoke to two science experts about the weather wonder.

What causes a rainbow to occur? 

Rainbows form when sunlight hits water droplets in the atmosphere, which are usually raindrops, though it can be mist as well. 

This scatters the sunlight into different colors, said Jason C. Furtado, PhD, associate professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. 

To see a rainbow, the sun must be shining from behind you and the water droplets must be in front of you.

As the sunlight enters the droplet at an angle, it refracts, which means the light slows down and changes direction, he said. 

"That change causes the colors within the sunlight beam to separate and form the rainbow," Furtado continued. 

A US Airways jet flies over a rainbow as it descends to land Tuesday, May 14, 2013, in Philadelphia.  (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

"This is the same principle that many may have experienced in a middle school science class when shining a light through a prism."

The vantage point of someone viewing a rainbow is important. 

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In order to see a rainbow, the sun must be shining from behind you and the water droplets must be in front of you, said Furtado. 

"You also want the sun to be relatively low in the sky, which is why rainbows are most often seen in the western sky in the morning and eastern sky in the evenings," he said. 

Do weather patterns impact the prevalence of rainbows?

The more rain there is, the greater the likelihood of seeing more rainbows.

Kenneth Kunkel, PhD, atmospheric science professor at North Carolina State University in Asheville, North Carolina, said incidents of increasing heavy downpours across the U.S. have been documented. 

A double rainbow is seen over Elizabeth Tower in Westminster, London, following a rain shower, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2022.  (Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2021, summarized global research studies on heavy precipitation, said Kunkel. 

The conclusion is that "the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation have likely increased at a global scale over a majority of land regions with good observational coverage."

You may even be lucky enough to witness a double rainbow when the light is reflected twice. 

To that point, Furtado at the University of Oklahoma reported there are three key things impacting this increase in heavy downpours. 

1. As air temperature increases, the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere can hold increases, exponentially, said Furtado. So, there is more water available for the rain.

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2. Our oceans are also warming, he said. This increases the evaporation of water into the atmosphere, making more water vapor available to produce rain.

3. A warmer atmosphere can also be more unstable — which intensifies storm systems and produces more precipitation, Furtado said.

With these conditions at play, you may be more likely to catch a glimpse of a colorful rainbow the next time it rains.  

"Rainbows are usually positive symbols in myths and legends." (Fox News Digital)

"You need to be standing with the sun to your back and the rain in front of you, "said the National Weather Service. 

You may even be lucky enough to witness a double rainbow when the light is reflected twice. 

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The New York City sky, for example, was filled with a double rainbow on Monday, Sept. 11, as Americans reflected on the thousands of lives lost due to the 9/11 terror attacks more than 22 years ago.

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A double rainbow also appeared in the sky following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, 2022, as people gathered around Buckingham Palace to grieve the longest-reigning British monarch.

Fox News Digital's Sydney Borchers contributed reporting. 

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