New York woman photographs ultra-rare quadruple rainbow

GLEN COVE, N.Y., April 21 (UPI) -- Forget the double rainbow, upside-down rainbow and even the rainbow Whopper.

A New York state commuter snapped a photo of a rare quadruple rainbow and shared the photo on Twitter, where it quickly went viral.

Amanda Curtis' photo, taken Tuesday morning at a Long Island Rail Road station in Glen Cove, N.Y., was retweeted hundreds of times.

Raymond Lee, a professor of meteorology at the U.S. Naval Academy, published a study in a 2011 issue of journal Applied Optics describing the conditions necessary for sightings of triple and quadruple rainbows.

"[There are] a couple conditions that are conducive to forming these things. Neither one of them is very enticing for photographers or casual viewers," Lee told National Geographic. "You have to have ... an absolutely inky black cloud background ... and then either a uniform distribution of raindrop sizes, or it has to be absolutely pouring."