Weird Rays at the Perplexing Park

Photo date: March 6, 2016. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

Below are some photos I took on the southern edge of Central Park in New York. The first photo shows light rays seeming to rise extraordinarily high, higher than a very high statue.

When I pointed my camera from the edge of the southeast corner of Central Park, facing downtown, I got the following strange colorful scene (you can see the buildings very clearly behind the strange streaks).

These photos were flash photos taken using "Night Photo" settings, with an exposure time of less than 2 seconds. Now someone might say that the strange effects were purely the result of these settings.  But the photo below (from February 18, 2016) is a flash photo taken with an exposure time of only 1/30 second, using completely normal camera settings (no "Night Photo" settings).  We see the same weird effect, in which light rises way up from its source.