The circle got larger and larger until it finally started breaking up,” said Fehlis, who was among seven co-workers looking up at the rainy sky. “Nobody had ever seen it before.”

Fehlis’ photos were forwarded to the National Weather Service in New Braunfels, and at first it was thought that the ring in the sky was the sun, with light bouncing off the clouds to create a halo effect.

But after receiving several calls from people who witnessed the lightning and the ring in the sky, the weather service changed its assessment.

“This (lightning) is more likely the cause than the halo effect I described earlier,” Jon Zeitler said in an e-mail to the Express-News. “In any event, it’s still unusual.”