That vertical strike isn’t “colored lightning.”

 That vertical strike isn’t “colored lightning.” Lightning is always white-hot. What you’re seeing is a single discharge illuminating different layers of the storm at once. Each layer has a different density, moisture content, and particle size, so the same flash scatters into separate wavelengths as it passes through cloud, ice, and rain.

The rainbow effect forms where the cloud deck acts like a broken prism.
Upper layers reflect shorter wavelengths, lower layers absorb them, and the terrain below briefly catches what’s left. The mountain isn’t glowing — it’s being lit for a fraction of a second by energy moving through kilometers of atmosphere.

What makes this moment rare isn’t the strike.
Storms do this all the time.

It’s the alignment: the cloud thickness, the internal lightning path, the camera position, and the timing all agreeing within a blink. One step to the left, one second later, and the colors vanish. The storm goes back to gray.

That’s why images like this feel unreal.
Not because they break physics — but because they reveal it.