'Surreal' photo captures rainbow lightning
(NEXSTAR) -- A photographer for the Minnesota Twins captured a stunning image of a rare meteorological event that occurred during Monday's home game against the Atlanta Braves.
The photo, posted on the Twins' social media accounts, shows a rainbow in the eerie night sky above Target Field in Minneapolis as lightning strikes at the same time.
"I'm not joking when I say this might be one of the greatest pictures ever taken," one user wrote in the replies on X, while another called the image "lowkey apocalyptic."
Brace Hammelgarn, the team's content and photography manager, took the photo during a rain delay in the second inning of the game.
"A severe thunderstorm was rolling through downtown Minneapolis around sunset, and while in the rain delay, I went up to our upper deck to take a few photos of the ballpark with a very ominous yellow sky," Hammelgarn told Nexstar. "The sky eventually went from yellow to red as a full rainbow appeared over center field."
While a photo of the scene stunned fans online, Hammelgarn said that "it was almost surreal to watch everything unfold in front of my eyes."
"The red sky alone was crazy, but adding in a rainbow and intermittent lightning made it an overall pretty crazy scene," he said.
Although rainbows and lightning aren't rare on their own, it's fairly uncommon to get a picture of the two happening simultaneously because "conditions have to be perfect," according to the Florida-based Climate Adaption Center.
John Fuller, chief meteorologist for Nexstar's KTVI, further explained that "lightning and rainbows are short-term events, with lightning lasting only a second or two." Plus, the photographer has to be positioned in the right place at the right time.
"Because of the brevity of two bolts of lightning captured in the same photo as the rainbow is what makes it so rare in nature," he said. "Atmospherically, the thunderstorm (cumulonimbus clouds) is moving away, and the sun is setting behind the photog."
The Twins' viral photo of this event has garnered more than 40,000 likes on their Instagram page this week, which came as a bit of a surprise to Hammelgarn, who's worked with the team for 14 seasons.
"In the moment, [I] thought we witnessed something cool but never thought that the frame would get as much traction as it did," he said. "Has been fun to see it pop up all over the internet the past couple days."