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Lightning fall seemingly in front of a double rainbow in suburban Washington , D.C. , yesterday ( Aug. 1 ) . All the natural process was catch on video recording .

The rarified moment pass off as thunderstorms displace through the region early Monday aurora , reported the Washington Post ’s Capital Weather Gang web log . The storms bump off Fairfax , Va. , bringing little rain , but creating a doubled rainbow as the sunlight poked through the cloud . Lightning appears to cut back through the bows in the video .

Our amazing planet.

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In orderto see a rainbowyou’ll need two ingredients : sunlight and raindrops . Sunlight is a mixture of colors . When it passes through a meth prism , or dip of water , some of the light is bent , or refract , more than other portions . Light leave the prism spreads out into a uninterrupted dance band of vividness called a spectrum . color go from red , which is bent least , through orangish , yellow , green , and blue all the path to reddish blue , which is bent the most . This is what happens when sun passes through water droplet in the atmosphere , with red on the exterior of the rainbow arch and reddish blue on the interior .

Sometimes a secondary curtain call forms outside the primary , giving the facial expression of a double rainbow . The secondary bow shape with the colors reversed : red on the inside , violet on the outside . The lower-ranking rainbow build at a 51 - degree angle from your shadow ; it ’s always fainter and unremarkably evaporate more quickly than the primary feather .

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colorful flashes of lightning can be seen among dense clouds

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