A spectacular photograph captured the moment when lightning struck against the backdrop of a stunning double rainbow.
Evie-Mae Parkinson, 19, took the “once in a lifetime” photo in Dereham, Norfolk, during a thunderstorm.
The teenager said she had gone outside to watch the rain when she saw the double rainbow.
Ms Parkinson began taking photographs of the rainbows as they stood out against the dark clouds behind, when the lightning struck.
He added that capturing an image like this, which he managed to take on Sunday, was “very rare.”
Evie-Mae Parkinson, 19, captured this spectacular photograph in which lightning strikes against the background of a stunning double rainbow.
Rainbows are optical illusions that form when sunlight hits raindrops at an angle of 42 degrees or less.
When a ray of light hits a raindrop, it is separated into its constituent colors, each with slightly different wavelengths, by a process called refraction.
It is then reflected back to the viewer in its dispersed form and when this happens on a large scale we perceive it as a colorful arc.
Thunderstorms provide an excellent opportunity for rainbows, as their volatility often means there is rain in one direction but sunshine in another.
For someone to perceive a rainbow, it must be between sunshine and rain.
And in this case, the storm also provided the ingredients for a lightning strike to cap Mrs Parkinson’s fit of rage.
Double rainbows are actually relatively common, but the second arc is often barely visible once completed.
The second, fainter rainbow is also always 10 degrees higher, wider, and the order of the colors is reversed: red is at the base and violet at the top.
According to the Met Office, this phenomenon occurs when sunlight is reflected twice in a raindrop, hence it appears upside down compared to what we are used to.
The dark band of sky between two rainbows is known as Alexander’s band, after Alexander of Aphrodisias, who first described it in AD 200.
Between the angles needed to form the two rainbows, sunlight is not scattered by raindrops, making the sky appear darker.
The band is formed because between the angles of deviation of the primary and secondary rainbows none of the sunlight is scattered by the raindrops towards the observer giving rise to the dark sky band.
One of the most prominent examples of a double rainbow occurred in September 2022, when a crowd gathered in the rain outside Buckingham Palace to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Another appeared for those who had gathered at Windsor Castle to remember the monarch, with Britons saying the Queen “sent us a signal” and “has really left us”.
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