Strong winds at the perfect time of day, 9am, combined with unusually high water volumes for November, created a previously undocumented 2,400 foot rainbow waterfall in Yosemite National Park.

Image credit: Greg Harlow

Utah-based landscape photographer Greg Harlow, who captured this amazing view, said that the rainbow lasted over eight minutes. It certainly was not a planned event – the photographer had “spent over three months total in Yosemite last year and just got lucky.”

He got lucky when trying to capture a photo of Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point. All of a sudden, the waterfall started “turning into” a rainbow, a phenomenon that only happens at certain times of year and under certain circumstances.

Harlow captured a real-time video, a time-lapse, and photographs of the event from his vantage point using a 200mm lens. You can watch the real-time footage above, and the time-lapse footage below:

What a lucky day!