Oh my god, quadruple rainbow all the way.
The man who cried his eyes out at the sight of a double rainbow at Yosemite National Park might need to get a new box of tissues -- a woman in Long Island, New York, got a beautiful shot of an incredibly rare quadruple rainbow this week.
Amanda Curtis, CEO and co-founder of the fashion startup Nineteenth Amendment, tweeted the photo -- which appears to show four separate rainbow arcs -- early Tuesday morning, following some stormy weather:
Some experts are saying that the photo doesn't show a quadruple rainbow, but reflections off of a body of water that happen to show four arcs. The Associated Press reports:
"What happened this morning in New York was quite a different phenomenon," Masters said in an email. They are reflections off of a water body, when the light bounces off a bay and then heads back through the droplets again, the experts said. These are called reflection rainbows, unusual but not oh-my-God.
The quadruple rainbow phenomenon is extraordinarily rare. In 2011, LiveScience reported that only five third- and fourth-level rainbows had ever been recorded in 250 years.
Rainbows are formed by light reflected from rain droplets. According to New Scientist, double rainbows are produced when light reflects inside a droplet twice, triple rainbows happen when it reflects three times, and quadruple rainbows appear when it reflects four times.
Usually, the third and fourth levels are extremely hard to see, because each reflection of the initial rainbow is fainter than the last.
Here's Curtis' rainbow in all its glory:
Curtis must feel lucky. But not as lucky as this guy:
This article has been updated with additional information from the Associated Press about the question of whether it is a double or quadruple rainbow.