Why does the sky sometimes turn green during thunderstorms, especially hailstorms and tornadic storms?
While, dangerous thunderstorms that drop hail and spin up tornadoes seem to be routinely observed as turning green by the public and even severe storm researchers when out conducting experiments, there may be a number of different reasons for the green color of storm clouds. It may be that thick, thunderstorm clouds, with their water vapor, rain and hail, scatter sunlight in such a way as to give the clouds a blue hue. When the sun is low in the sky, such as before sunset when most severe storms occur, the reddening light of the sun when shining through Earth’s atmosphere makes the bluish cloud tint turn green. Or it may be that storm clouds act as a kind of canvas upon which low sunlight scattered by particles in the air paints a greenish color. These explanations may play in concert with each other to create the observed green tint. In the spring of 1995, a University of Oklahoma graduate student used a special device called a spectrophotometer to measure the wavelength of light emit
