My sister lives in Carson City, Nevada and I just emailed her this morning and mentioned that. She emailed back and sez she sees them EVERY TIME IT RAINS! On rare occasion she sees a DOUBLE RAINBOW! It's been raining a lot here in Hemet(well compared to our normal which is way sub average) and haven't seen a single rainbow at all. For a couple of YEARS. Are you rainbow satisfied or rainbow deprived too?
Would it surprise you to know that rainbows are actually quite common? Any time light passes through a water droplet, a rainbow is produced (prism). However, unless you're at the precise angle to that droplet, the bow won’t be visible to you. Oh, it's there, but if you're just hair off that "exact" spot, you won’t see it. That’s why they seem so rare to us. Conditions have to be so precise for a person to see a rainbow – the water drops must be between the person and the suns position in the sky. The sun must be at a precise angle to the water drops and the viewer (why they’re mostly seen in afternoons and mornings). There must be enough water droplets to provide continuous refraction (a single water droplet wouldn’t produce a bow long enough for us to glimpse it).
Double, triple or quadruple rainbows are rarer still, but only because we view them from one spot. Oh, they’re there all the time as well (the more water droplets the more rainbows or prisms). However, since they are at a different angle (higher or lower to that that precise plane of view) to us, we don’t see them. The higher one is (and at the precise location) the better chance one has to se multiple rainbows.
Sundogs and halos around the moon or sun are also a type of rainbow. However, instead of light being refracted through water, it’s refracted through ice crystals. Thus, they aren’t in “bow” form.
I live in a very wooded and hilly area. This cuts down on my ability to be in the right location to see a rainbow (they block either the sun or the sky). Because of this, I really haven’t seen a rainbow in quite some time (although other people in this area are always posting them on Facebook).