Remembering Sheffield’s record-breaking six-hour rainbow as colourful drawings lift everyone's spirits during crisis
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Intended as a symbol of hope to raise the spirits of passers-by, there are surely very few streets in the country that haven’t been touched by the uplifting initiative.
But the trend has prompted archivists to demonstrate why Sheffield is a champion in the rainbow stakes – and not just in an artistic sense.
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Hide AdThe Sheffield City Archives has uncovered a picture taken by The Star on March 14, 1994, when a rainbow shone over the city for a full six hours.
The arc of light was so long-lasting that it made the Guinness Book of Records, setting a new precedent for the meteorological phenomenon.
Further documentation is scarce, but the extraordinary rainbow was said to be seen continuously from 9am to 3pm, with observers at Sheffield University reporting its presence for much of the day. The Star's photograph was taken in Sharrow.
The city held its title for more than 20 years but was beaten by Taiwan's capital, Taipei, in 2017 when an unbroken rainbow was spotted there for nine hours. Experts claimed the Taiwanese bow was visible from 7am to 4pm.
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Hide AdChou Kun-hsuan, a professor at the Chinese Culture University who documented the event, told the BBC at the time: “It felt like a gift from the sky… it’s so rare. When we broke the previous record after passing six hours, I was hardly able to stay seated for lunch. I was so excited.”
Rainbows are formed through reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky.
They can be full circles; however, the average observer sees only an arc formed by illuminated droplets above the ground.
In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary one and has the order of its colours reversed, with red on the inner side.
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