Residents in the nation’s capital woke up to a remarkable sunrise Tuesday as a picturesque, stunning crown of bright orange pillars crested over the city. The display stemmed from a perfect combination of meteorological elegance and chaos, making for gorgeous photos while captivating social media.
Sunrise in Washington occurred at 7:08 a.m., around which time the display was at its most photogenic. It lasted only five to 10 minutes before dimming, the show as fleeting as it was stunning.
The culprit for the vibrant sunrise? A picket fence of “crepuscular rays” or light beams that shoot through gaps in the clouds and form shadows, generating alternating spokes of light and darkness.
Two weather systems conspired to treat early risers. The first, over Alabama, is bringing heavy morning thunderstorms to parts of the Southeast United States. That “cutoff low,” or area of cool air and spin at high altitudes, is set to linger there for days, as it’s pinched off from the jet stream and has nothing to tug it along.
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Counterclockwise winds around the low have helped fan clouds to the north, meaning the “outflow,” or exhaust clouds at upper levels — made of ice crystals — are passing west to east across the Washington region. The thin cirrus clouds are at around 35,000 feet.
Meanwhile, a backdoor cold front, drawing in air from the ocean nearer the ground, is allowing a shallow, cooler marine air mass to slide ashore over the Delmarva Peninsula. That’s led to a few patches of low clouds.
When the sun rose this morning, those near-surface clouds blocked slices of sunlight from reaching the sky above. Since the sun is low to the horizon, those alternating shadows and strips of light were projected onto the underside of the thinner, more diaphanous cirrus clouds, which acted like a canvas for the delicate pastel hues.
Because the sun is shining through the atmosphere at more of an angle, moreover, all but the reddish-orange rays were scattered away, allowing those colors to dominate. The rays spread out with height, making for triangle-shaped slices. They were oriented almost east to west, since the sun rose just six degrees south of due east.
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Washington sees sunrises or sunsets this beautiful only once in a great while. Tuesday morning’s is reminiscent of similar displays that occurred on the evenings of Aug. 1, 2019, and June 23, 2020, although those were caused by distant thunderstorms. Tuesday morning’s featured more spokes, which were also surprisingly evenly spaced. Somehow, the entropy of the universe yielded dramatic organization.
Tuesday’s postcard sunrise was the second in a row. Monday also presented a magnificent dawn sky. Whereas crepuscular rays headlined Tuesday’s sunrise, Monday’s sunrise presented more texture and variety as the sun’s rays intercepted a mix of cloud types — stratus, altostratus, stratocumulus and cirrus.
Below find a selection of reader photos from both days.
Tuesday’s sunrise
Monday’s sunrise
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