Strong winds at the perfect time of day, 9 a.m., 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 incredible sight, said the rainbow lasted more than eight minutes. It was certainly not a planned event: the photographer “spent more than three months total in Yosemite last year and just got lucky.”

He got lucky trying to capture a photo of Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point. Suddenly, the waterfall began to “turn” into a rainbow, a phenomenon that only occurs at certain times of the year and under certain circumstances.

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

What a lucky day!