The color of lightning

Click to view image at full size

Arizona's clear air and wide horizons lend themselves to spectacular lightning displays. The picture above isn't one of them. This was a rather ordinary thunderstorm but what is significant are the colors generated by the lightning. In this case, the color was light lavender, but sometimes the skies turn green or other colors. To quote an article from Answers.com:

Lightning comes in every color of the rainbow (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Violet, to name a few). It's almost always white, but often it's tinged with another color around the edges. The three most common colors (aside from white) are electric blue, electric yellow, and "Voltage Violet." The color of the bolt depends on how hot it is; the hotter the lightning, the closer the color will be to the end of the spectrum. Infrared, (red) which is the coolest to ultraviolet (violet), thus hottest.

The shot above is of some very hot lightning.