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Rainbow rain curtains over high desert storm

A rain shaft lit from the side can do something strange to a storm. When a thick base rolled in over the Southwest high desert, the kind of country that looks like Arizona or Northern New Mexico, the drops themselves started carrying color instead of just falling. Sunlight was still low enough to catch the rain at an angle, and the result was vertical color pillars rather than the usual wide arc. The reason is the shape of the rain curtains: they drop in narrow sheets, so the spectrum splits inside each one and shows up as straight bands. Heavy drops flashing light as they passed through gave the whole thing a sparkly quality. It reads like an aurora, but it is just sunlight meeting falling water.

2h

Mpg@mpg

Follow

Rainbow rain curtains over high desert storm

A rain shaft lit from the side can do something strange to a storm. When a thick base rolled in over the Southwest high desert, the kind of country that looks like Arizona or Northern New Mexico, the drops themselves started carrying color instead of just falling. Sunlight was still low enough to catch the rain at an angle, and the result was vertical color pillars rather than the usual wide arc. The reason is the shape of the rain curtains: they drop in narrow sheets, so the spectrum splits inside each one and shows up as straight bands. Heavy drops flashing light as they passed through gave the whole thing a sparkly quality. It reads like an aurora, but it is just sunlight meeting falling water.

2h