A fogbow(Jason Hudson / Unsplash)Have you seen a fogbow? It’s a real thing! LPM’s Bill Burton spoke with Tawana Andrew to learn more.This transcript was edited for clarity and brevity.Bill Burton: It's time for us to take a look at the Science Behind the Forecast, as I'm joined by WAVE 3 meteo rologist Tawana Andrew. Good morning, Tawana.Tawana Andrew: Good morning. Today's topic is the less kaleidoscopic version of a rainbow.BB: You told me about this topic, and the first thing I did was check the calendar to see if it was April 1. And it's not. This is not an April Fools’ joke. We're going to learn about fogbows today. Tell us about a fogbow.TA: A fogbow is the colorless and the more rare variation of a rainbow. Rainbows and fogbows are formed basically in the same way, where you have sunlight interacting with water droplets, but the size of those water droplets are vital to whether we see color or not. For a rainbow, those form when light reflects or refracts through larger raindrops. That's what splits the white light into its component colors, so we can see the red, orange, yellow, green, violet that we typically see.Now, to create a rainbow, water droplets must at least be two millimeters in diameter. That's the smallest it can be. And those droplets at this size are a little bit more spherical, and that's what allows for even color distribution as the light bends through those water droplets. Basically refraction, so the size is key. For fogbows to form, of course, you need fog.BB: That makes sense.TA: Inside of fog, the water droplets are a lot smaller. In fact, for fogbows to form, you have that light refracting and reflecting off of water droplets that are at least basically five-hundredths of a millimeter. They are significantly smaller. They're itty bitty, and that smaller size actually limits refraction and allows for more diffraction, which is when the light bends around a water droplet, and that diffraction leads to the colors being a little bit more smudged and blended together.BB: A bit like a three-year-old's drawing.TA: Where everything just kind of blends together and it just becomes one weird color. It’s what you end up with when that light bends around the water droplets. It's so finely scattered that you see an arc of white and not really any color. Sometimes you can have a little bit of yellows or blues on the outer edges, but they're mainly a white arc in the sky.You have to be standing in the perfect spot to see that white arc of a fogbow. You can't be inside the fog bank. If you're inside the fog, that's going to lower visibility and you won't be able to see it. If you're slightly outside of the fog, facing it, with the sun or moon behind you, you might see it. It helps if the sun is a little bit lower in the sky and illuminating that thin fog ahead of you, and you can see that beautiful arc.They're not very common. They're more likely to be seen in the Arctic and the Antarctic, but we can see them here in Indiana and Kentucky sometimes. Every time that fog starts to thin out, kind of angle yourself just the right way to be able to potentially, hopefully, fingers crossed, see a fogbow. ...read more read less