Bizarre light pattern as severe storm passes, August 14, 2011, Reston, VA

We went outside on our porch (you can see the roof of our building in the lower left of this film) in order to watch a severe storm come in. A low deck of clouds blew in quickly, and we noticed a patch that looked lighter. At first, we thought it was just an area of cloud that was perhaps more thin, and catching the moonlight, but the storm was blowing in hard and the patch wasn't moving. Then, as we were watching, it started changing colors, cycling through the colors of the rainbow. This lasted about 20 minutes before the heavy rain hit us.

Filmed with a Canon 7D at 6400 ISO with a 24-70mm 2.8L Lens. We did what we could to capture this bizarre phenomena, and the blue really does show up well. I've raised the exposure slightly in iMovie and upped the saturation to bring out the color a little bit more in video. From where we were standing, it was absolutely awe-inspiring.

UPDATE 8/16/2011: The source of the light is most likely from the uplights on the One Dulles Corridor building on Parkridge Ave. http://www.1dulles.com/

UPDATE 8/31/2011: Thanks for the shoutout, Restonian!!

Category:

Education

Tags:

• color
• strange
• light
• storm
• Reston
• rainbow
• refraction
• lightning
• energy
• phenomena
• weather
• rain
• thunder

[marsdenmediavideo]

Thanks to the suggestion by a commenter on Capital Weather Gang's fb page, we believe it's mostly likely the One Dulles Corridor building on Parkridge Blvd. 1dulles[dot]com

[TheAdastraGRL]

It was the moon through the clouds. The moon was just past full.

[marsdenmediavideo]

@TheAdastraGRL Can't be the moon. This was looking North from our porch. The moon rises in the east. Also, this lasted two hours without moving. The moon would have moved considerably during that time.

[marsdenmediavideo]

You can see it a little more clearly in some still photos we shot and posted on our FB page. /marsdenmedia

Just hold down the right or left arrow key and scroll through the pictures rapidly. Like what you see? Give us a like on FB as well. Thanks!

[devvin]

Wow. I wonder what that could be. Thanks for posting this. I live in Silver Spring, Md. I'm gonna send your video link to some members of my astronomy group and see if they have any idea what it could be.

[marsdenmediavideo]

@devvin It was still visible in the sky at nearly the same location a full two hours after we first spotted it. Amazing. This would have been looking NNE from Reston, toward Great Falls. The moon, if it had been visible at all, would have been almost 90 degrees to the right of this. But, the color cycling was truly amazing, and I'd love an explanation!

[GUMMYBEAYUH]

@marsdenmediavideo I was about to say, it reminds me of the colors from the USA Today HQ.

[WetPooooopie]

Nice skies in ur vid

[WetPooooopie]

the lihtning was so close I smelled the electrcity from it nearby and it was so close that the thunder bangs and cracks were so loud the crackles would let me sleep all night we were under the gun for 7 hours untill dawn, interesting sky. Were in brooklyn where we got the brint of the storm or mybrooklyn aaccent stowm as we don't prpnounce our R's

[WetPooooopie]

Wow whoever slept though this must of been half dead jk lol lol lolz

[Trillora]

This is crazy! The blue is definitely brightest. Cool! But Weird! (~Liana :)

[TheAdastraGRL]

From where were you filming?? You say Reston in the video title and then describe seeing the light over McLean... Reston is North and west of McLean (ie, McLean is east and south from Reston... the direction you would have faced to see the moon)...

And the moon is not going to move fast at all...

I was out in Alexandria and there was a major thunderstorm to the NNE... however, in the SSE the clouds were thinner (never clearing) but thinner and the moonlight was coming through.