Posted on 08/25/2011 9:09:17 AM PDT by bigheadfred
There was a small storm moving across the way this morning. With the sun just coming up it was producing a rainbow effect in the storm.
So I got my little Kodak camera out and started filming, hoping to catch some of the lightning, too.
When I was looking at it frame by frame to see how well one of the lightning strikes showed up, I was surprised with this 3 frame sequence.
This bolt of lightning seemed to generate itself in my backyard. The storm was a couple of miles away.
Thought it was interesting.
Thought I would share.
Interesting - can lightening forks go as far as several miles from the main strike? Is that what you had in your yard?
Nice
ping
ZOT!
Only when I looked at the film.
Like I deserve it? Haha. Ya missed me.
Amazing pix. Thanks for pinging me. Did you just move in?putting in a underground shelter?in ground pool?If it’s pool I hear the salt filters are amazing.
Cool !
That’s amazing! Or a nice Photoshop job ;-)
Seriously, thank you for sharing that. Was there a visible impact in your yard?
Thanx for the post-last bolt looks real close.Tom
Oh and don’t touch your fence for awhile you may get zapped and turn purple.
If lightning hit that close to you, you'd be the first to know. Hard to believe that it wouldn't have grabbed hold of the fence.
I heard lightning goes from the ground up. The one seemingly in my yard is the first frame.
good shots.
The other two are definitely behind the trees. Maybe a small separate strike? Just as well for you that it was small, I’d say.
When I was about twelve, in a camp in the Adirondacks, there was a thunder storm, we were sitting in a room at night with the window open and the lights out, and suddenly a ball of lightning emerged from a brass light fixture on the wall. It slowly crossed the room and went out the open window.
Strange and unforgettable.
And one time a lightning bolt hit the water not far from our sailboat during a race. I felt a jolt of electricity go up my arm, where I was holding a wet main sheet. I was very proud that I didn’t let go, and we won the race. But it was just as well it didn’t hit a little bit closer.
Really nice photos
Does lightning strike from the sky down, or the ground up?
The answer is both. Cloud-to-ground lightning comes from the sky down, but the part you see comes from the ground up. A typical cloud-to-ground flash lowers a path of negative electricity (that we cannot see) towards the ground in a series of spurts. Objects on the ground generally have a positive charge. Since opposites attract, an upward streamer is sent out from the object about to be struck. When these two paths meet, a return stroke zips back up to the sky. It is the return stroke that produces the visible flash, but it all happens so fast - in about one-millionth of a second - so the human eye doesn't see the actual formation of the stroke.
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