Mysterious

To those of us within the weather geek squad, these would be referred to as crepuscular rays. To be completely technical about it, they are anticrepuscular rays being that you said you were looking east. They were caused by rays of the sun being shadowed by high cloud tops to your west just at sunset. Looking at the radar I'm seeing a large complex of thunderstorms nearing the MN state line (30 minutes past midnight Tulsa time as I'm writing this) which created your picture opportunity earlier.

I too have seen that phenomenon before, thank you okeedoky for the explanation.

Once (and only once) I saw the anticrepuscular rays meet at a point above the eastern horizon, the anti-solar point. It was just after sunset in an area of open farmland. Really cool. I've looked for that every time I've seen crepuscular rays since, but no joy.

Nice, thanks wx geeks for info.

The interesting thing about these rays is that they are parallel to each other even though they seem to be aimed at one point (anti solar pt) . Just like railroad tracks viewed from an overpass; the rails look like they will meet at a single point off in the distance.