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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
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Hi tsuwm, I was expecting your thunderbolt  - having looked it up in the OED after posting. But there I also found fulgurous, which fits the bill even better..
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Joined: May 2000
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addict
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addict
Joined: May 2000
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illuminated white sheet across the sky--and that's sheet lightning
Ha, ha. And I used the malaprop blanket lightning!
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 261
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2002
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Isn't there supposed to be some kind of phenomenum that occurs during particularly intense lightning storms called ball lightning? I just wondered because when I was growing up in China we were told stories about these things that were supposed to follow people around (which no doubt scarred me for life  ). For a long time I thought this was just some made up story until I recently read a newspaper article describing a similar ocurrance - is it real, does anyone know how it happens? (Yeay! It snowed in London today and set!!  )
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
My father told me about seeing ball lightning. A orangish sphere the size of a grapefruit came through a stove pipe where it went into chimney, landed on sink ledge, then went down the sink drain.if I remember correctly, this is an ionized gas plasma. I'll go search for that. Here is one of several URLs about ball lightning: http://www.pupman.com/listarchives/1998/April/msg00221.htmlA better one: http://www.tbns.net/mediapoet/tech19b.htm
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Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 77
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 77 |
Thanks for that post, Dr. Bill. I love lightning, and find it fascinating that there are still so many natural phenomena we have yet to perceive, much less decode.
I have never seen ball lightning, or met anyone who has, but I have heard that it may account for a significant portion of UFO sightings. That makes sense to me, especially if we are really talking about a few different phenomena, rather than only one. And it seems to be sensible that there could be some patterning with earth's electro magnetic meridians, though I fear venturing into the new-agers territory here. Our planet is living, dynamic and evolving, is it not?
And my two most impressive lightning encounters were on planes, in the sky. About 20 years ago I was returning from a football game on an alums private jet with a pilot and a few coaches. A huge storm loomed over Texas, but we had to make it back to California from New Orleans quickly, so we had to fly through it. I'm afraid the pilot underestimated the size and power of that storm, and the 7 of us spent a terrified couple of hours weaving through those giant thunderheads with huge boalts of lightning exploding all around us, unveiling(what's the word I want here? startling us with...?) the majestic silhouettes of those huge clouds in some strange strobe-like display, jostling the plane wildly to and fro (yes, to and fro!:) None of us looked at each other or spoke even one word as each silently recounted all of the teams and coaches that had met their demise this way. I know we were all sure we were going to meet our maker that very night! It was terrifying, but also perhaps the most spectacular display I have ever seen! And all of a sudden we emerged into clear, smooth skies and lived to tell the tale.
And the other impressive encounter was just this September, when my daughter, husband and I were off to Austin for a family wedding. We don't travel much as a family, so this was a treat for the three of us. As we took off over the Pacific, in a gentle, rare, end of summer rain, my daughter, nosed pressed to the window, saw lightning off in the distance, over the open ocean, but this view was from above, looking down on it. I had never seen it like that. It was beautiful, and far less frightening, I might add, perhaps because it was silent as we were out of range of the attendant thunder. And curiously, it appeared not to actually reach down and connect with the sea, yet from our angle this could have been just an illusion. We were able to watch in wonder for 6 or 7 minutes, before the plane turned back eastward and the storm was out of sight.
maria
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
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Dear MM: I have never seen them, but have read about them. Here's URL you might enjoy: http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/sprites.html
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
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Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 77
journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Nov 2002
Posts: 77 |
Thanks ww and Dr. Bill. Wow. That last url on high altitude sprites is something. And now (whilst hoping not to get my dear milum all worked up on this thread) I am wondering if indeed I have seen some of these things from the air? It seems that the lightning was in pale colors on that fateful plane ride long ago, though I just chalked it up to the effects of illumination from within the thick clouds.
And my daughter and I may have seen sprites instead of lightning out the plane window.
These seem to me to be to be possible cases where perception and one's concept of reality may influence one another. I had no idea about these other forms of atmospheric phenomena, and so I didn't have those categories in my mind in which to file my new observations. So it seems I just squeezed my memory of what I saw/experienced into a tired old existing thread, the category of 'regular lightning' in my mind, rather than pursue/create something entirely new. And surely, my mind does this hundreds of times each day as new experiences, which are not life threatening, get filed into the wrong bin in an automatic quest to establish some order. Now I'm wondering what I really saw on those two days. In the future, perhaps I'll be not necessarily more observant, but rather more vigilant in describing exactly what I saw, rather than categorizing it too quickly.
Next time I'm in the library I'll head to the lightning section. (And I am embarrassed to admit that I couldn't even spell lightning correctly before this thread. Uhhgg!)
I am actually quite frightened of lightning when it's close by. I'm rather sure I'm going to get struck by it at some point. My old dog and I were once trapped on the wrong side of one of the Sawtooth's in Idaho when a huge summer storm blew through. We raced it up one side of the mountain and down the other, much of the time above the treeline, so we were basically out in the open, hugging close to the shale, with lightning cracking all around, and no one but mountain sheep (moving away far more agilely than either of us!) anywhere near.
Good old dog. He could have left me and gotten out of danger, but he anxiously stayed by my side as I frantically stumbled along.
I had forgotten all about that one. Luckily, we got safely back to camp before the real deluge began, but I'm not sure I'll forget the sound of the bolts hitting the rocky mountainside....
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,692 |
I am actually quite frightened of lightning when it's close byThat sounds like great good sense to me MM! Catching up on this thread this morning I was expecting to see some reference to St Elmo’s fire. This phenomenon was observed by sailors as glowing balls of fire attached to the tips of masts and yard arms and it gave rise to superstitions related to St Elmo (aka St Erasmus, patron saint of sailors). Unlike ball lightning it always remains attached to an object. Here is a URL on St Elmo’s fire: http://www.mysterylights.com/types/stelmo/ How about this description of lightning in bulk quantity: The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
Guinness Book of World Records 2003
Worst Lightning Strike Death Toll
A total of 81 people aboard a Boeing 707 died when their plane was struck by lightning when flying near Elkton, Maryland, December 8, 1963.
Longest Lightning flash
At any one time, about 100 lightning bolts per second hit the earth. Typically, these bolts are about 5.5 miles long. However, in 1956 meterologist Myron Ligda (USA) used radar to record a lightning flash that covered a horizontal distance of 93 miles inside clouds.
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