A rainbow formed briefly in the city sky in the Esplanade area a little after 4pm on Sunday as the sun came out after a spell of rain.

A rainbow forms when water droplets suspended in the air that sunlight passes through act as prisms and separates the colours it is made up of.

The city received rainfall in bursts throughout the day and Jora Bridge in the Santoshpur area recorded the highest rainfall at 26mm.

Behala, Joka and Patuli were some of the other areas to get more than 10mm of rain while Ultadanga in the north received only 1.8mm. The rainfall was skewed as there was no strong weather system passing close to Calcutta, GK Das, director, IMD Calcutta, said.

Satellite pictures showed a low-pressure area over Odisha and the monsoon trough, an invisible line connecting the low-pressure points across the county, passing through Odisha.

And this could result in widespread rain for the next two days there and rain here in the city, Das said.

Picture by Bishwarup Dutta