![]() Unusual Weather Related Stories |
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Subject: Some dramatic ball lightning episodes Date: 21 Mar 1996 11:53:43 -0500 From: chaston111@aol.com (Chaston111) Newsgroup: sci.geo.meteorology Following up on the recent postings on ball lightning, the following are some documented cases of interest. In January 1984, ball lightning entered a Russian passenger aircraft, and according to the Russian news release, "flew above the heads of the stunned passengers", subsequently leaving through the tail section. The ball lightning left two holes in the plane. Here is some of the text from the news release: "Suddenly...a fireball about four inches in diameter appearead on the fuselage in front of the crew's cockpit. It disappeared with a deafening noise, but re-emerged several seconds later in the passengers' lounge, after piercing in an uncanny way through the air-tight metal wall. The fireball slowly flew above the heads of the stunned passengers. In the tail section of the airliner it divided into two glowing crescents which then joined together again and left the plane almost noiselessly." While repairing equipment aboard the aircraft, mechnainics discovered two holes - one in the front of the fuselage and another in the tail section. Ball lightning has been known to squeeze itself through a keyhole or under a door, subsequently reassuming its ball shape about the size of a basketball when inside the house. It has also seemed to be attracted to anything animate, which is why we have stories of ball lightning "chasing" people and animals, imparting a static-electricity type of charge when catching up with humans or pets. A particularly intereting ball lightning episode occurred during the explosion of Mount St. Helens in Washington state in 1980. Observers reported the following, from about 100 miles southeast of the volcano: "The lightning was in ball form, streaking towards the ground, connected neither with the cloud nor with the ground. It was like a group of balls all going in the same direction." Closer to the volcano, at about 29 miles north of it, an eye-witness reported, "After the cloud passed overhead, lots of lightning started at some 600 to 800 feet in the air, and formed big balls, big as a pickup, and just started rolling across the ground and bouncing." Ball lightning's life-span lasts from a few seconds to perhaps over a minute. One of the strangest stories I am personally aware of happened when I was the Meteorologist-in-Charge of the NWS Office at Rochester, New York. While working the day shift during a day with considerable thunderstorm activity, an aquaintance who was a commercial airline pilot came into the office and told me about a ball lightning encounter his aircraft passengers experienced while in descent to the airport through a thunderstorm. A "ball of sparks" about the size of a basketball entered the aircraft apparently through an engine intake, moved into the fuselage, and proceeded to a chase a flight attendant up and down the aisle. She was screaming as she tried to outrun the ball lightning. The lightning apparently dissipated quickly before striking her. I documented these and a lot of other highly unusual weather stories in the book, "Terror From the Skies". Except for one photograph a colleague gave me, which he believes may be a rare picture of ball lightning, there is no significant photographic, including video, documentation of ball lightning. It is infrequent and lasts typically for under a minute, so that you or I would have to have ready access to a camcorder or camera to catch it while underway. With the proliferation of video cameras in our society, we will hopefully have some good visuals of ball lightning underway, which should help us in understanding the phenomenon. ---Pete Chaston
Subject: Re: Ball lightning Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 00:57:37 GMT From: henkl@noord.bart.nl (Henk Lankamp) Organization: none Newsgroups: sci.geo.meteorology In July last year there was a ball lightning just some 50 meters of my home. I didn't see it myself, but both my wife and son did. They didn't see a 'normal' lightning preceding the ball. The ball was just above the houses and disappeared within a few seconds with a loud BANG (sound of an explosion), I heard the sound myself, and (my wife and son told me) the ball was red coloured and had a diameter of a football. The ball didn't move, it just exploded and disappeaerd. The ball lightning caused some damage on TV-equipment and fuses in the houses nearby. The ball was seen by a lot off other people as well, as stated in the newspaper the next day. At the moment there was a small (unexpected) thunderstorm moving across the city. There were only a few vertical lightnings before and afterwards. There was no rain at the moment of the lightning. Henk Lankamp, Groningen, the Netherlands henkl@noord.bart.nl ___ Henk Lankamp Groningen, the Netherlands henkl@noord.bart.nl http://www.noord.bart.nl/~henkl/weather.html
Subject: Close Encounter With Ball Lightning Date: 12 May 1996 01:38:49 GMT From: jcracing@ix.netcom.com(Jim Conlin ) Organization: Netcom Newsgroups: sci.geo.meteorology Sometime in August, 1995, my twin nine year old daughters saw something that sounds a lot like ball lightning. They both happened to be looking out our rear window watching a violent afternoon thunderstorm (near Columbus, OH) when they saw what they describe as a bright ball with streaks of lightning coming out of it above the rooflines of the neighboring houses. While they do not agree on the distance away (one thought the ball was above the backyard while the other though it was over the next block or further), they do agree that it was motionless and remained for three to five seconds. I was talking on the telephone with their older sister at the time and since she was using a portable (home radio type) phone, the transmission was interrupted and we were cut off. Calling them back immediately, I found the twins hysterical from what they has seen. I initially discounted their descriptions as inaccurate or misidentified. However, nine months later their descriptions have not changed and the experience is clearly apart from anything they had seen before or have since. I have come to beleive that what they saw was the phenomenon sometimes called ball lightning and, given the elusiveness and controversy surrounding the subject, would be happy to share further details of their experience to individuals or agencies studying the matter. Curiously enough, this event occurred only a little over a month after our home received a weak but direct lightning strike. As a matter of fact, I happened to be touching the garage door's steel guiding rail when the house was struck resulting in a burn to my left palm and sore muscles in my arms the next day. I can provide accute details of that experience as well including the moment before the strike during which the charge was building up. Thank you in advance for your help. Jim Conlin P.S.: If there is a more appropriate newsgroup for this post, please advise.
Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 20:53:28 -0500 From: Mike Duffy < mike.duffy@sympatico.ca> (personnal communication) To: larry@hsv.com Subject: Unusual lightning I saw your request for unusual weather in the sci.geo.meteorology usenet group. Here is a description of some very unusual lightning I observed several years ago: I was driving eastwards from Toronto to Ottawa one evening in the middle of the summer. The sunset (behind me) seemed to go on for a very long time. The whole sky took on a very attractive and unusual shade of purple/pink, and after a while I remarked to myself that because of a low uniform cloud deck the pink glow seemed just as bright in all directions. This went on for over an hour, until I rather abrupty realized that it really should be getting darker. At first, I just assumed the lighted sky ahead was due to the proximity of a city, until I remembered that I had already gone past the Peterborough turnoff. I checked out of my side windows and found that the pink glow was the same everywhere. I actually got the little skin crawling sensation on the back of my neck that happens when something is amiss. I pulled my car over at a rest stop in order to investigate and after I got out of the car I noticed a crackling sound which I thought at first was due to a faulty insulator on a nearby hydro line. When I looked up it was then that I first noticed that the entire sky was covered by very fine lightning which extended from horizon to horizon in all directions. The individual lightning "bolts" were so fine that they appeared almost like spider webbing, hugging the contours of the bottom of the cloud deck as they spread. I was completely dumbstruck for several minutes as the realization sunk in that this display was what had been causing the pink glow in the clouds, and that I had been driving under it for over an hour without noticing the fine lightning strands. After a while noticed that there was an ordering of the display. The lightning was oriented in distinct east-west bands, with a clear area in between each band. Each band was organized as an array of separate tree-shaped structures with the "trunk" pointed south. The entire band "moved" northwards by each tree sending out new feelers towards the north, some of which eventually would strengthen and become brighter. At the same time, the southern trunks would "pop" out of existence, splitting the tree into two or more smaller ones. I determined the cloud deck to be about 1/3 to 1/2 sound-seconds in altitude by correlating extra loud "pop"s in the general crackling noise to the dissappearance of the major trunk-like structures. It took about 20 seconds for one line of lightning "trees" to move out and be replaced by another one. At the zenith, each band of lightning (and corresponding clear area together) distended about 15 degrees of arc. Following is an attempt to use ASCII to draw this. Imagine your feet pointing South with your head tilted back so you're looking straight up: North is behind you v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v V V V V V V V V V V V V \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / Y Y Y Y Y Y I I I I I I I I I I I I < East West > v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v V V V V V V V V V V V V \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / Y Y Y Y Y Y I I I I I I I I I I I I The lightning bolts were not regimented as precisely as this. Within each band, some were ahead of their neighbours, but the clear area between each band was completely devoid of anything. Each bolt was NOT symettric as I have drawn here. The whole structure moved north by new "feelers" constantly growing out of the "v"s in my picture while trunks would eventually "pop" off as the clear band encroached on it. The uniform cloud deck was sort of bumpy-bottomed. The lightning bolts seemed to go as high as they could without touching the clouds. There was no precipitation whatsoever. After I watched for about 45 minutes I decided to get on with my trip, and I continued to see this unusual display for about two more hours until I drove past the bottom of the cloud deck. I've spoken about this at times with meteorologists where I used to work at Environment Canada. None of them has ever heard tell of such a thing. However, there was one old asian gentleman (a systems engineer) who said he saw a similar display once. Of course, now I never travel without a camera.
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