Water Fall? May be. Fire Fall? Yes, at Yosemite
@ramani-VR4O43
•
Oct 25, 2024
Oct 25, 2024
1.6K
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)
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]](proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forwardedemails.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2Ffirefall_5.jpg&hash=d71f53cfbcf69fbbb171240d9b8db247)
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!!!
