Why does the sky turn green during a thunderstorm?
348053
where are you from?? it turns pink here... any ways its the phosphorus in the clouds.
562590
WHY IS THE SUNSET RED?   \n\nAs the sun begins to set, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected  and scattered. As less reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to  orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer  wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes.   \n\nThe sky around the setting sun may take on many colors. The most spectacular shows occur when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. Then, as some of the light heads towards you, different amounts of the shorter wavelength colors are scattered out. You see the longer wavelengths, and the sky appears red, pink or orange.
872592
Well, you know that a tree's leaves turn brown in the winter. There is a reason for that. What makes a tree's leaves green is chlorophyll. All during spring and summer a tree is flooding it's branches and leaves with chlorophyll and the combination of sunshine and rain creates photosynthesis. This creates more chlorophyll. \n    During the winter months a tree stops sending chlorophyll to the branches and instead stores it and lives on it all winter until spring.
514416
The correct answer is yes it can.\n\nIn a thunder or cumulonimbus cloud the warm air rises and the cold air sinks, this movement of air causes a huge difference in the electrical distribution with the top of the cloud having a positive charge and the bottom having a negative charge.  A positive charge also builds up on the earths surface.\n\nEventually these charges built to such an extent that there is an electrical discharge from the negative charge at the base of the cloud towards the positive charge at the top of the cloud and also down to the positive charge on the ground.\n\nWhat actually happens is that the first discharge travels towards earth in short but very rapid bursts of about 100 meter lengths - when you see jagged strokes of lightening this is because each burst can change direction.  As it gets closer to earth the strength of the electrical field intensifies until contact is made with the earth.\n\nThis initial discharge is only a weak stroke of lightening and is called the Leader Stroke.  As soon as contact is made there is a much more powerful stroke of lightening which travels from the earth back to the cloud and this is the lightening we see, this is called the Return Stroke.
242740
I've heard that the sky turns a type of dirty greenish greyish colour before a severe hailstorm, or a tornado.  But I'd like to think that the sky would do that because of the types of clouds, and the absorption and reflection of light.  I've never seen it myself to say for sure. \n\nI've also been told that there are green flashes that apprear on the sea (but the sea level has to be right) around sunset.  I've never seen one of those either. Apparently, it's one of those must-see things.\n\nAnd then again, another place where greens exist is in the northern lights (Aurora Borealis)...  There are greens and they're gorgeous.  Now I've witnessed that, and it's simply GORGEOUS!!\n\nlike you said, there's always the good old rainbow!  I've seen that too :p\n\ncheers!!
1052262
erm... rainbow forms when the sun shows up after a rain. this is because after a rain, the air is very humid, which means got water particles. when sunlight passes through these water particles, they are split into 7 colours, because of refraction. different colours means the colours travel in different speed. the red is the fastest, while the purple is the slowest. if the 7 colours are combined together, they will form the white, or transparent, light again. keep in mind that the rainbow only forms at the opposite of the sun.
256423
Thunderstorms form when significant condensation, resulting in the production of a wide range of water droplets and ice crystals, occurs in an atmosphere that is unstable and supports deep, rapid upward motion. This often occurs in the presence of three conditions: sufficient moisture accumulated in the lower atmosphere, reflected by high dewpoint temperatures; a significant fall in air temperature with increasing height, known as a steep lapse rate; and a force such as mechanical convergence along a cold front that will focus the lift.
825004
Probably just the weather changing quickly ? We had a thunderstorm a few weeks ago, except it was snowing with it. Really warm before it and really cold afterwards... I'm sure it's nothing to alarm yourself over.
939967
When the sunlight enters the Earth's atmosphere, it scaters. The light passes throught the molecules of gases in the air and scates. The only one colour that is visible to us most of the time is blue. During sunrise and sunset, the sunlight has to go through more atmosphere and the blue changes to reds, oranges and purples.
414227
You guys got a lot of it, but the sun is actually green. The atmosphere absorbs much of the light to make it more of a yellowish white light. Pollution and the ozone layer trap and absorb the green light that the sun produces. Then you see what you see. (were you looking at the sun??? :)
666982
Actually a storm came through Fort Worth in about 1995, the sky was about as green as a lilly pad.  We didn't get the severe weather where I lived, but FW got grapefruit sized hail in the park that actually killed several people.  Now that I study and work in weather I know what causes the green discoloration when the light refracts off hailstone in the air it causes a light green light, with more widespread and intense hail you get the darker green
28059
because it reflect the color of the sky? what happens to a blue ocean wehn the sky turns dark. The ocean turns dark. Simple
1015359
using simple physics\n\nThe blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.\n\nthe grass is green because the other colors are absorbed and only green is reflected. Grass and most other plants are green because they contain a pigment known as chlorophyll.\n\nSun isn't really yellow. The color yellow is a purely human interpretation of a collection of radiation that hits the retinae of our eyes and gets processed by our visual cortex.
681841
Same principle as neon lighting.  With a neon light you have a gas with current passing through it causing it to emit off a light.  In this case it sounds like a concentration of whatever the specific gas happened to be in the air at the lightning strike, and what you saw was the gas emitting it's light.  Anyone happen to know what gas gives off green light in neon lights?
1048733
The sky is blue partly because air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. \nWhere the sunlight is nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, the light's path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even yellow light is scattered out, leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red, at sunrise and sunset.\n\nso\n\nAn old weather predicting adage rhythmically states: \n\nRed sky at night, Sailors' delight.\nRed sky in morning, Sailors take warning. \n\nHumidity in the air is indicated by red skies at sunset-- red sky at night-- or, at sunrise-- red sky in morning. The forming raindrops scatter the short-wavelength blue light so that only the long-wavelength red light reaches the observer.
414202
(m)\n\nAs the sun begins to set, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected and scattered. As less reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes\n\nThe sky around the setting sun may take on many colors. The most spectacular shows occur when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. Then, as some of the light heads towards you, different amounts of the shorter wavelength colors are scattered out. You see the longer wavelengths, and the sky appears red, pink or orange
46085
I grew up in an area where we had a lot of tornadoes. I have seen this and it does happen, however, it doesn't always happen, and sometimes a thunderstorm will have greenish clouds and no tornado. I think it is related to the way the light is filtered through the clouds, and perhaps the really big clouds that come with tornadoes may have more of this effect. There is a good article at the link below: