Results of an investigation of diffraction of light passing through a distorted finite amplitude ultrasonic wave are given. A method is developed and used to determine the second harmonic component of the distorted wave at various distances from the transducer while maintaining a constant local fundamental component. It is shown that the observed discrete diffraction order intensities (wide light beam) and the observed continuous light distribution (narrow light beam) are in good agreement with theoretically predicted values. Measurements were made at 3.0 Mc in water with approximately23 atmlocal fundamental pressure amplitude.