On an early autumn morning

 On an early autumn morning, just after sunrise, this stretch of road briefly became part of the sky itself.

Low clouds hung heavy with moisture as the Sun rose behind them. Instead of a normal rainbow forming across the horizon, light was funneled straight downward through falling rain and thin ice crystals. The result was a set of vertical rainbow pillars—bands of color standing upright, aligned with the road .

This wasn’t a portal or a beam.
It was optics.

When sunlight is low and passes through uneven curtains of rain or ice, colors can separate vertically rather than forming a curved arc. The wet pavement below reflected the light back upward, strengthening the illusion that the road itself was leading directly into the spectrum.

The alignment had to be exact:
Sun angle, cloud thickness, precipitation, and viewing position all stacked for only a few minutes. As the clouds shifted, the colors thinned, stretched, and quietly disappeared.

Most drivers would pass without stopping.