The appearance of a rainbow during a lightning storm is an incredibly rare sight and a photographer took a vivid photo of the phenomenon earlier this month.
Greg McCown is a real-estate agent who has a passion for photography. On a lucky evening, McCown managed to get the timing just right and take a stunning photograph of lightning passing through a rainbow.
While the picture seems like a trick of Photoshop with a rainbow superimposed on branching lightning, it is the real thing.
McCown told the Weather Channel that he has been trying to catch a picture of the spectacular phenomenon for seven years. He saw a lightning strike in the middle of a rainbow while driving to work and wanted to capture the image.
“Rainbows and lightning are both beautiful and in very different ways,” he said and even after taking thousands of photos, he could not catch nature’s duo together.
McCown shared the photograph, taken with a DSLR camera and lots of patience, on Facebook and Twitter and the image went viral.
The image along with other photography is hosted on his website.
Lightning forms when negatively charged electrons in cloud droplets are attracted to positive charges on the ground. When this difference in charges becomes strong enough, then there is a flow of current, which is lightning.
An ideal place to photograph lightning strikes is in desert areas like Tuscon where thunderclouds form higher up due to drier conditions near the ground, according to Gizmodo.
Rainbows are seen when there’s water in the air. The sun must be free from clouds and behind the viewer. When light passes through rain drops, the light scatters, revealing the range of wavelengths, National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration explains.
Rainbows are actually full circles, but from the ground, viewers can only see a half-circle, says NOAA. Pilots can see circular rainbows.
