Water Fall? May be. Fire Fall? Yes, at Yosemite

Yosemite National Park in California is an amazing place. Stunning scenery with nature in all its finery and grandeur. The fire water fall shown in pictures here are a very rare combination of optics, weather, melting of snow and other principles of physics coming together to create an unbelievable spectacle.

What is happening is total internal reflection and leaking out of the sunlight due to refractive index differences. The water fall becomes a gigantic fibre optic cable with a leaky surface. Who cares? The result is bewitching.

(One picture alone has been uploaded to reduce retrieval time. The rest can be accessed from the links)
#-Link-Snipped-#​

The spectacular view of the waterfall is created by the reflection of sunlight hitting the falling water at a specific angle.
This rare sight can only be seen at a 2-week period towards the end of February. To photograph this rare event, photographers would often have to wait and endure years of patience in order to capture them. The reason is because its appearance depends on a few natural phenomena occurring at the same time and luck.
First, is the formation of the waterfall – It is formed by the melting of snow and ice at the top of the mountain. It melts between the month of December and January and by the end of February there might not have much snow left to melt.
2nd, is the specific angle of the sunray hitting the falling water – The sun’s position must be exactly at a particular spot in the sky. This occurs only in the month of February and at the short hours of dusk. If it is a day full of clouds or something blocking the sun, you can only take pictures of your own sorry faces on the waterfall. It coincides with the fact that the weather in the National Park at that time of the year is often volatile and unpredictable. It compounds the difficulty of getting these pictures.
Someone did!!! And we all get to be mesmerized by them!!!

[​IMG]

Replies

  • Ramani Aswath
    Ramani Aswath
    Sorry. Had to remove the links.
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    Sir, hot-linking to the images would not be good for the linked site. I'll have to remove the links. I'm sorry.
  • Ramani Aswath
    Ramani Aswath
    I apologise if that was not correct. I do not understand the issue involved. Can you please put me wise?
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    bioramani
    I apologise if that was not correct. I do not understand the issue involved. Can you please put me wise?
    Typically, it's not a good practice to put a direct link to other website's image or media files. Because if those files are removed from the website, we'll create a lot of 'dead-links'. The best way to do is to use a 'file upload' facility on this site and upload the images on our server here. It not only serves them to everyone accessing the website but also eliminates the problem of dead links.
  • Ramani Aswath
    Ramani Aswath
    Thanks for the info. I think I understand. The 404 kind of issue. How does one upload files to CE server?
  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare
    bioramani
    Thanks for the info. I think I understand. The 404 kind of issue. How does one upload files to CE server?
    You'll notice 'Upload a file' button at the bottom of the thread. Just click on it and follow. Here's a tutorial: #-Link-Snipped-#
  • Ramani Aswath
    Ramani Aswath
    Testing, testing
    firefall_4

    Done. Thanks, K
  • Jeffrey Arulraj
    Jeffrey Arulraj
    Nice pics here Sir nature in its finest beauty
  • Indrajeet Roy
    Indrajeet Roy
    God that was AWESOME!!!! It was so awe - inspiring!! Man, I wish I was there in person when the pics were taken!!!!!!
  • manishks
    manishks
    really awesome.!! Water fall is the Nature's beauty at its best! 😀 Thank you so much for sharing this. I will let all my colleagues know about it.

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