The perfect storm formed over Hollister, California this week that produced a rainbow and flashes of lighting at the same time.
Storm chaser William Justo. who caught the electrifying show on Wednesday, told DailyMail.com: I was chasing a stationary Area of storms in Hollister, CA around sunset and it so-happened that a rainbow appeared within the storm.
‘I just used my iPhone 8 Plus hoping to capture a bolt with the rainbow and after a minute, it happened.’
The footage shows an ominous sky with shades of deep purple and blue hanging over an open area.
While a glorious rainbow peaks out from the dark clouds, bright flashes of lightning scatter from above, according to the video shared on Storyful.
The perfect storm formed over Hollister, California this week that produced a rainbow and flashes of lighting at the same time
‘I’ve seen a lot of pics and video online with lightning & rainbows together & I always dreamed of witnessing it in person & I finally saw it with my own eyes,’ Justo told DailyMail.com.
‘It was a surreal experience and I was filled with excitement and had an indescribable adrenaline rush.’
Lightning often occurs during heavy storms while rainbows are generally formed after the rain has stopped – making the display across the sky a seldom seen sight.
Rainbow lightning is a rare as the chances of lightning striking near a rainbow are slim, explained Randall Cerveny, a professor of meteorology at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Storm chaser William Justo caught the electrifying show on Wednesday evening, using just his smartphone and Nikon camera.
‘Usually, you don’t get those two things to line up at the same time,’ he said in a 2015 Live Science piece.
Both use raindrops in different ways, with rainbows using them to scatter sunlight. Lightning, on the other hand, can be created when raindrops shuttle electrical charges.
But to capture both at the same time, it must be raining with enough sunlight for a rainbow to form and lightning strikes still sizzling.
People have to be standing in between the sun and the storm at the exact moment the sunlight hits the raindrops and electrical charges create lightning.
The rare weather phenomena was capture previously in November 2020 by another storm chaser, Jake Heitmann, overhead of Lewiston-Clarkson Valley in Idaho.
Social media users called the sight a ‘Mother Nature’s wonder’ and said it was ‘beautiful and scary’ at the same time.
The footage shows an ominous sky with shades of deep purple and blue hanging over an open area. While a glorious rainbow peaks out from the dark clouds, bright flashes of lightning scatter from above
A similar occurrence happened in Oklahoma. Stormchaser Jake Heitman told Storyful that he captured the incredible moment on Tuesday just outside of Tulsa.
‘I punched through the storm and went to the backside of it to find this amazing rainbow!’ Heitman said.
Footage of the spectacle shows a rainbow clouded by the evening sky as strikes of lightning crackle overhead.
Lightning can be seen at least three times throughout the video.
Heitman said he captured the unusual shot just seconds after he began recording.
‘I set up my cameras and not 30 seconds after I started recording, a beautiful spider bolt of lightning reached across the sky,’ he said.
What shocked him the most was how the lightning appeared to strike from the middle of the rainbow.
‘I have never seen anything like this before, a rainbow with lightning originating in the center of the rainbow! Doesn’t get better than that!’ said Heitman.
