This video from a dashcam was taken July 24th, 2016 in Chicago. The slo-mo of the lightning hitting a pole near the vehicle is one of the most intriguing things I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen lot of videos that were of lightning strikes, but never one so close and with such detail.
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I noticed the phone chatting or whatever too, like so distracted the person didn’t even notice. Maybe it was the radio.
I never was scared of lighting until I moved to Florida, Gee the thunder storms down here quite something compared to New York or Vermont.
Central Florida is the lightning capitol of the nation. The lightning systems,which I supervised,at the Space Shuttle launch pads were struck on average 12 times a year. A typical strike would measure between 20-35 KA. This was all recorded by over a dozen cameras. So in some NASA archive somewhere there are lots of lighting strike videos.
Anyway my 2 cents on lightning.
Cool!
When lightening strikes CLOSE you hear a sharp crack prior to the boom. Sort of like a bullet passing close before the sound of the report.
Not sure whether the higher pitch of the crack travels faster or if the boom comes at the end of the strike. A close one (75-100 yards) has the sound of a crack-boom.
No need to worry about it because if you heard it then it’s over and you’re alive to tell about it. I don’t think you would hear it if it got you. Anyway, it’s one of life’s experiences if you’re blessed with it.
The crack is the sound which arrives at your ears from the part of the bolt at ground level.
The boom is sound which comes from higher up along the bolt, the sound transformed by distance of travel.
That makes sense.
It wasn’t a dashcam… but it was a cool shot!
Here is a link to my five favorite lighting shots from MY dashcam this year:
https://youtu.be/_tgLR8Fbw44
I had two encounters with lightning when I was a teen. I was standing about 20 feet from a metal light tower watching a game at our local minor league ball park when it was struck by lightning. It felt like every muscle in my body relaxed and I found myself flat on the ground. When I was able to look up, I discovered that almost everyone else was on the ground, too, including the players on the field.
The second time was when I was camping with my family on the Canadian coast of Lake Superior. My father wanted to pitch our tents under some trees on one side of the road. My sister and I insisted that we wanted to be on the other side of the road closer to the lake. Later, two older men, brothers, put their tent where my father was going to put ours. That night, lightning struck one of the trees and killed one of the brothers who had left the tent to check the lines and stakes.
Later, when I was a student naval aviator, I was on a solo flight during the build up of a storm in Meridian, MS. I had just departed to practice touch-and-go landings when they executed a student solo recall. Because I was last to take off, I would be last to land. I set up at 2,000 feet over the outlying field where I was going to practice landings, just in case I needed to land before I was called back to the air station. As I waited, the storm closed in and the ceiling started to drop. That made things interesting, because I was not instrument qualified and had to maintain visual flight rules. It was getting harder and harder to see the field below me. Then I started to see ball lighting rolling up the nose and over the canopy, about a foot over my head, of the T2C jet trainer I was flying. There is a lot of controversy concerning ball lightning, but I know what I saw. It was not St. Elmoe’s Fire, which is stationary. It was shaped like a ball and moving very fast. Pretty exciting at the time.
I eventually left the flight program because there were too many students from my year group, but I had a few interesting experiences as a student aviator. This was not the most exciting one.
I had a ball lightning encounter as a passenger in a 737 shortly afer takeoff from CLE in an intense blizzard (I was actually surprised the pilot went for it – runway visbility was minimal, perhaps less than 100 yards). Shook the whole aircraft, and caused a brief flicker in the power systems, and a very loud bang, and whiteout flash outside the aircraft (actually blueish then yellowish). We were through the cloud and into sunshine at perhaps just 5,000ft before the pilot came on to admit what happened: he claimed to have experienced it a couple of times before, but admitted it was the most dramatic of his encounters.
I almost did a double post non no, but thought better of it and figured out what should have been an hopefully more appropriate way to accomplish my mission, i.e. to garner expert feedback, that is not encouraged on Tips and Notes. If I’d known Anthony was going to post his lightning thread the next afternoon after my video post, I would have placed mine here. I’ll not repeat my discussion nor repost my video, but would appreciate some ideas on what that captured phenomena is. My first very amateur and intuitively derived guess is that it is some sort of negatively charged plasma ball that is propelled by a strong atmospheric electrical flux in the vicinity of the thunderstorm toward the positively charged ground – or along those lines. Fast moving ball lightning?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-and-notes/#comment-2266539
Amazing! Though it’s a little odd that an Art Director at an advertising firm just happens to be recording in slow-motion when lightning strikes nearby. My primitive calculations suggest the slow motion footage was done at around 300fps which isn’t too far off from the 240fps capability of some smartphones and digicams. It looks more real than anything I’ve seen coming out of Hollywood. I’m a bit skeptical but I guess I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.
Since the topic of ball lightning has come up……
When I was about 14 (1950’s), I along with about 100 other people, were outside watching a field hockey game.
A thunder storm rolled in, and there was some sheet lightning at high elevation.
Suddenly, we noticed a bright spherical light about the size of a basket ball descend from the sky at one end of the field. It progressed slowly down the length of the field, and the game stopped as we watched this.
However, one of the players had her back to this light, and was unaware of it. It came up to her, progressed down the length of her hockey stick, exited her chest, and continued down the field. At the other end, it slowly drifted upwards until it disappeared into the clouds.
The girl was pronounced dead at the scene.
The subsequent report of the incident claimed “mass hysteria”, and said the girl had died of a heart attack brought on by the exertion of the hockey game.
As far as anyone has been able to tell, there has never been a video recording made of any such thing as ball lightning.
I would like to see one if any such film exists.
Absent an explanation of what that stuff you saw might actually consist of, I find myself dubious.
Sorry to say so, but lots of people have seen UFOs too, and many of those are actually on video.
Even rare sights like meteors screaming through the atmosphere are captured on camera often.
There are cameras everywhere these days.
Where is all the ball lightning?
I believe you are mistaken regarding ball lightning.
If you google “ball lightning in laboratory”, numerous hits come up.
Evidently, ball lightning has been created in the lab, and this suggests that it can exist naturally.
Regardless of that, I stand by my report of my youthful experience.
Did you watch my video I posted the link back to? If it’s not fast moving ball lightning, what is it? Technically, it could be called a “UFO” , but not in a context of being anything unnatural. Here is another example taken from a distance by a fellow – appears at about 35 seconds. Like my video, it’s in the vicinity of, but not within the storm. Other examples I’ve seen are in the storm.
I’m just looking for answers. If I have to, I’ll start calling people at the National Weather Center. Someone, maybe a student, will be interested in seeing it. I certainly would accept a “yes I’ve seen that before, but they don’t really know what it is”.
I was remiss in not mentioning how spectacular Anthony’s post was, btw. No intention to distract from that fact.
Ken:
Where is your other video? I don’t see it.
Your most recent video showing a storm in Soux Falls shows atmospheric conditions very much as I remember them to have been during the incident of my childhood.
The major difference was the ball of lightning drifted down at a very leasurely pace, and then slowly drifted up the field. Ie: it all happened very slowly.
1968/9 in Adelaide city a massive storm was underway, a bolt of lightning took out a huge pillar on the corner of a pub some blocks away and we suspect one of the “sideshoots” was what came through the wall of the corrugated lean-to we had as a kitchen and hit the back of the (luckily) wooden handled knife my mum was using. mum and knife sure jumped high!
I am still using the knife some 50 yrs later and the mark is still there although worn by time n use;-)
next one was me going out to the tank for water in a storm..lightning hit the ground in the next yard and I sure copped a fizzy charge..felt pretty much” beside myself” for a day afterwards
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Very common to see trees blown apart by lightening, simple process, any moisture in the wood is instantly turned to steam with explosive expansion resulting.
Car antenna, windshield wiper, and sticker indicate right side of vehicle. Camera not fixed. Very end of video someone says “HOLY…” as car comes to a stop.
Lucky with capture of lightning strike and not having startled tailgater.
RE: William, July 30, 6:10 pm.
Here – I referred to this above(July 28, 10:41pm). It was posted on Tips and Notes the day previous to Anthony’s spectacular video post.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/tips-and-notes/#comment-2266539
As I stated on T&N, I am speculating that the ball of plasma( whatever its genesis) in these examples could have been accelerated by a strong atmospheric electrical flux in the vicinity of the storm
My mother as a child was watching a storm out on the back porch of her home, when lightning struck a tree and sent a bright globe of glowing gas at her. She woke up on her back, but apparently unharmed, though terrified of lightning thereafter. Based on the video I posted here and my own that I posted at T&N, I’m now wondering if that “lightning strike” was not in fact a ball phenomena all the way originating spontaneously in the atmosphere as these her appear to have. Based on your recounting, she was a very lucky little girl – as am I 😉 !
As I stated on T&N, I am speculating that such balls of plasma(? whatever its genesis) could be accelerated by a strong atmospheric electrical flux in the vicinity of the storm in these cases.
OOPS Apologies, I “copied” instead of “cut” when I moved the text from the end to the middle of my comment, and failed to notice it.
I live in Fl and am outdoorsy so I have been around several very close lightning strikes including ball lightning.
My first encounter with Ball lightning was witnessed by myself and my sister. After a passing thunderstorm, we were walking along the edge of a lake. We saw a glowing yellow/white sphere appear about 25′ up over the lake about 50′ away from us. We ran. It moved parallel toward the shore and suddenly made a right angle turn and went right overt our heads hitting a pine tree to our left. It exploded setting the tree aflame and raining burning debris on us.
I’ve been outside in a serious T-storm sitting under a picnic shelter in deep woods. I felt uneasy so pulled me feet off the ground and sat on the table bench. Felt more uneasy so sat on the table top with my legs pulled up. Felt more uneasy so balanced on one foot crouched on the table top (all this under a dry picnic shelter with a dry concrete floor.) Suddenly, lightning struck 6′ in front of me to the dry concrete of the picnic shelter floor. I could not tell where it came from but I think it may have leaped from an outlet on the shelter support to the floor. Tremendous noise like (POW), not the usual type of thunder.
During a thunderstorm, I’ve seen a glowing ball emerge from the bathroom water sink drain (it was about 1″ diameter) and move upward and to the left where it touched the tap and vanished with a loud “CRACK” leaving a melted spot on the tap handle.
After a childhood filled with lightning, I majored in Physics and my Masters Thesis was on some applications of Electrostatics so I know enough to be scared to death of lightning.
In my business, we are in a metal building and there is a cell tower just up a hill about 50′ from us. LIghtning hits this cell tower fairly often. At least once a year, it then seems to go down hill to our building and then comes into the building on the grounding system. It has burned out pumps, destroyed an old electron microscope (set the outlet on fire) and desytroyed some of the building wiring. I tell my employees to step away from machinery during storms and take a break. All of our computers have wireless mouses because I have seen large sparks jump from a computer to a grounded outlet during a storm.
In my neighborhood, all the houses have their own wells with downhole pumps. Such wells get hit very often burning out the pump. My neighbor has such a well totally below the surface with no sign of the well above surface but lightning has hit the grass over the well three times destroying the pump.
AS an avid sailor, I’m scared to death of lightning so I once calculated the rough probability of a lone sailboat with a 45′ mast being struck while under such a thunderstorm as being about 5-11%. A perusal of insurance statistics very roughly bears this out.