A SPECTACULAR double rainbow was captured on camera by Northern Echo readers on Thursday evening.

The weather phenomena occurred during a heavy rainstorm.

Northern Echo Social Media Editor Matt Westcott saw it at Morton Park, Darlington.

"It was truly spectacular. I can't remember seeing a rainbow so vivid. Unusually you could see both ends," he said.

"It took me a couple of minutes to find a safe place to park and by this time it had disappeared."

Readers were quick to respond to a call for photos, however, and posted their photos on the newspaper's Facebook page.

They are reproduced here.

Sarah Parrott wrote on our Facebook page: "I was gutted on my train journey home from York. There was the most beautiful really strong half a rainbow but I wasn't next to the window to get a picture. 

"Most people sadly won't have seen it as too busy looking at phones but I love a rainbow for some reason always makes me feel hopeful."

A Met Office spokesman said: "Surprisingly, this phenomenon is actually relatively common, especially at times when the sun is low in the sky such as in the early morning or late afternoon.

"The second rainbow is fainter and more 'pastel' in tone than the primary rainbow because more light escapes from two reflections compared to one.

"The secondary rainbow is also dispersed over a wider area of the sky. It is nearly twice as wide as the primary bow.

"A key feature of double rainbows is that the colour sequence in the second rainbow is reversed, so instead of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, the colours appear in the opposite order.

"The dark band between the two rainbows is known as Alexander's band, after Alexander of Aphrodisias who first described it in 200AD.

"The band forms because between the deviation angles of the primary and secondary rainbows none of the sunlight is scattered by the raindrops towards the observer giving the band of dark sky.

"Double rainbows are formed when sunlight is reflected twice within a raindrop with the violet light that reaches the observer's eye coming from the higher raindrops and the red light from lower raindrops.

"This means the sequence of colours is inverted compared to the primary rainbow, with the secondary bow appearing about 10 degrees above the primary bow."