Tallahassee residents awoke to a sunrise to remember in Florida’s capital city on Friday morning.
Across North Florida, people took to Facebook and social media to share their best shots of a skyline bathed in pink, purple and red hues.
“Any time you have mid- and high-level clouds present at either sunrise or sunset you do have a chance for some more brilliant colors,” said Lance Frank, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, who briefly spoke to the Democrat about the science of stunning sunrises.
It was the ideal setup for the morning light show. It was overcast as day broke on a chilly Friday morning with what Frank said was a broken layer of alto stratus clouds at about 10,000 feet. Such clouds can often cover much of the sky and are composed of water droplets and ice crystals.
“When sunlight passes through it’s a process called scattering and that leads to some of that brilliant coloring we saw this morning,” he said.
As for Saturday, don’t hold your breath for another breathtaking opening to the day.
“We are gonna be pretty well socked in, pretty overcast tomorrow,” Frank said. “Even if we get a peak of sun, which is unlikely around sunrise, the clouds are much lower… We’re not looking at a stellar sunrise.”
See more shots from Friday’s sunrise in the thread below.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Brilliant Tallahassee, Florida sunrise leads to flood of photos online