Rainbow forecast for Reykjavík
Reykjavík, Iceland: live rainbow odds for today, the best hour to look up, and the week ahead.
Rainbow weather in Reykjavík
Reykjavík is a mid-ocean island climate: volcanic terrain squeezes showers out of clean maritime air, and the surrounding sea keeps them small and fast-moving. Clean air makes for unusually vivid colors when a bow appears.
Wherever you are, the rules are the same: a rainbow forms opposite the sun, only while the sun is less than 42 degrees above the horizon, and most often in the minutes after a shower moves through. The gauge above runs those rules against live ensemble forecasts for the 12 km around Reykjavík.
Rainbow questions, answered
- When do rainbows appear in Reykjavík?
- Rainbows need sunlit rain with the sun lower than 42 degrees, so in Reykjavík the best windows are the hours after sunrise and before sunset on showery days. Around nine in ten rainbows appear in the hour right after rain stops.
- Where should I look for a rainbow in Reykjavík?
- Always directly opposite the sun: put the sun at your back and look toward the retreating rain. In the evening that means looking east; in the morning, west.
- What is the rainbow chance in Reykjavík today?
- Bowcast computes it live from ensemble weather models: about 40 forecast runs are checked for sunlit-rain conditions around Reykjavík, hour by hour, for the next 7 days. The live figure is on this page and on the map.
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