'Rainbow Lightning': A Rare Natural Wonder

Key Highlights

He had spent seven years searching for the ideal shot. Then, with the snap of his camera one fateful evening, he finally captured it. Greg McCown, a photographer, storm chaser, and Tucson, Arizona native, managed to take a photograph that would become world-famous. On August 8, 2015, near Marana, Arizona, McCown captured an image that became known as "Lucky Strike," showing a jagged lightning bolt dancing across a desert rainbow. What a dramatic sight. (See the image in the tweet below.)

It's rare to witness both meteorological events in the same place at the same time. Capturing them side by side is also incredibly challenging. While lightning and rainbows can occur simultaneously, perfect weather conditions are essential, and to get the shot, you must be in the right place, facing the right direction, at the precise moment.

Rainbow Deceptions

As a clever Muppet once pointed out, rainbows are merely illusions. They are the result of perception and do not physically exist. Speaking of things that aren't quite as they seem, consider sunlight. People often assume that the sun appears yellow or orange, but if you were to view it from space — free from Earth's atmospheric distortion — you'd see that the light emitted by our sun actually appears white.

White light is a combination of all the colors in the visible light spectrum. Each color travels at its own unique wavelength, with some being shorter than others.

Regardless of the color, the path of light changes once it passes into a different medium. Air, being less dense than water, causes light to bend — or "refract" — when it moves from the former to the latter.

Rainbows only become visible when a large amount of water droplets fill the air. But that's just one of the many factors. To see a rainbow, you must position yourself with your back to the sun. If that glowing orb is hidden by clouds or precipitation, the colorful arches will remain out of sight. For a rainbow to emerge, the sky surrounding the sun must be clear.

Once all the conditions are met, the show begins. First, sunlight from behind you enters the water droplets. As it travels through each droplet, the wavelengths of light bend at different angles and separate. The light then strikes the back of the droplet, bounces off, and travels back toward you, refracting a second time as it exits the water.

Now, this is where your eyes come in. Each droplet in the mist will send only one color at the perfect angle to meet your eyes. This is why the colors of the rainbow become distinct, with red at the top and violet at the bottom.

This isn't the full picture; we haven't even covered the fact that rainbows are circular. But for now, let's shift to a more striking subject.

A Tale of Contrasts

Unlike rainbows, lightning is something you can feel. Though you'd want to avoid it: Paralysis, cardiac arrest, and even death are among the many dreadful consequences that have befallen those who have come in contact with it.

Most of us recognize the type of lightning that strikes between the bottom of a storm cloud and the Earth. But lightning can also form within a single cloud or horizontally link two clouds. It may even appear in the midst of a volcanic eruption. (Isn’t that amazing?)

In every case, lightning is created by opposite charges. Ice crystals, water droplets, and floating dust particles are the three main components of storm clouds. Through a process scientists haven't completely figured out yet, these tiny particles acquire positive and negative charges. Positive charges move to the top of the cloud while negative charges gather at the bottom.

The negative charge at the bottom of the cloud causes the ground beneath it to acquire a positive charge. The tops of trees, buildings, and people standing under such clouds also become positively charged.

Lightning is nature's way of balancing out these atmospheric disparities; the intense electrical surges briefly neutralize the polarized areas in the sky.

When It All Comes Together

Your ability to witness lightning doesn't hinge on the external lighting conditions or where you happen to be standing. However, rainbows, like lightning, are a rare phenomenon that require both the right vantage point and favorable lighting to be visible.

This is why lightning and rainbows rarely appear together. Storm chaser McCown tweeted about his seven-year pursuit of capturing both at once, only to have the right moment present itself unexpectedly. When he captured "Lucky Strike," he was facing away from the sun. The skies around the setting sun were clear, yet storm clouds remained, still holding their charge.

It is indeed a rare occurrence to find oneself in such an exacting situation. But now and then, against the odds, someone has a camera ready when lightning flashes around a rainbow.

In 2015, a sheriff in the Texas panhandle struck gold when he captured a cloud-to-cloud lightning bolt splitting a double rainbow. Interestingly, astronomer Phil Plait inadvertently filmed the same stunning display while recording a YouTube video on his lawn in Colorado.

Your chances of photographing a lightning-rainbow combo can depend on your location and the time of year. For example, Tucson experiences a yearly monsoon season from mid-June to late September. The storms that roll across this vast, open land — where you can spot a developing storm from 50 miles (80.4 kilometers) away — provide a rare opportunity for nature photographers. Some, like McCown, have even successfully captured lightning-lit rainbows during this period.

The experience is truly unforgettable. Who wouldn't want to witness the clash of a rainbow's half-halo meeting the jagged streaks of lightning? Nature, in all its splendor, never ceases to amaze.