Is the Sun Through the Air Transparent?

Air is mostly transparent to visible light and also infrared light. It's less transparent in the UV, which is one reason why we have like UV space telescopes above the atmosphere. Some of these very high energy UV light does survive passing through the atmosphere if you're near a nuclear bomb. Is it sort of like lightning and thunder? Like you will see the flash of a nuclear bomb before you actually get hit by the shockwave.