Valley rainbows
When working on a mountain top, one very soon breaks the habit of looking for rainbows only in the sky. Here rainbows can appear at all sun elevations, even when one really does not reckon with them. Last year I could watch rainbows at sun elevations of more than 60° on Mt. Wendelstein. The most beautiful ones appeared when several rain showers passed on May 31, 2010. The maximum sun elevation during this observation was 63.6°.
Later the same day (sun elevation now was “only” 41.8°) i had the rare opportunity to see a part of a rainbow on the left side of the mountain, while at the same time there was a fogbow on the right side, which soon was replaced by a glory. Unfortunately, it was impossible to look from the northeastern part of the mountain at the same time, so I could not see the transition from rainbow to fogbow.
On this day, rainbows appeared 6 times, the last one was a double reddish rainbow over the Inn valley.
Author: Claudia Hinz, Brannenburg, Germany
Posted on June 18, 2011, in glory and spectre of Brocken, observations, rainbow and fogbow and tagged fogbow, glory, rainbow, subhorizon rainbow. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Atmospheric Phenomena 
Wow, I’ve never seen rainbows to this sun elevation … thanks for this interesting post!
Here my newsest record rainbow with sun elevation of 68deg:
http://www.album.de/bild.cfm?action=act_images_details&imageID=2104013&type=big&albumID=62321
http://www.album.de/bild/2104010/regenbogen-ueber-davos.cfm
Taken above Davos from Jakobshorn, Switzerland.
Best wishes
Claudia