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!
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.
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.
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.
I think you are looking at two events. The one in your yard looks like leader stroke that never “connected” to the main charge. The more distant one behind the tree did connect.
Every lightning strike starts with a leader stroke. They have a distinct sound.
Looks like you almost witnessed a strike in your yard!
It looks like the one in your yard is actually a digital relic in your camera from the main strike as they have the same shape. I assume the main strike behind the tree was the main strike and the first picture in the sequence. I know how it could happen on a film camera but not sure how that would happen on a digital camera unless it was an imprint from the lightening flash temporarily on the lens.
Special photography can capture this. An item that is unable to properly discharge a build up of electricity creates this streamer as the potential is attracted to the opposite charge in a storm. When they make contact...Whoopeeee! Lightning.
This is why my radio antennae are well grounded. They rapidly discharge any potential to ground. Never been hit even once...for which my expensive comms equipment is very grateful.
My friend, you caught one of the most interesting phenomena of lightning. We all see lightning coming from the sky to the ground, yet lightning as best as I can describe needs a path and the pathway always starts from the ground.
So my friend you are a very lucky man or woman because that one did not complete and it was in your front yard. This is not uncommon, for pathways not the complete. If it had completed I would not want to be standing anywhere too close to it.
Great pictures, and very rare camera picked of a pathway not completing, you are indeed fortunate. I’m sure there’s descriptions of the event that you caught, but it’s the best a layperson like myself can do. Absolutely Cool.
My friend, you caught one of the most interesting phenomena of lightning. We all see lightning coming from the sky to the ground, yet lightning as best as I can describe needs a path and the pathway always starts from the ground.
So my friend you are a very lucky man or woman because that one did not complete and it was in your front yard. This is not uncommon, for pathways not the complete. If it had completed I would not want to be standing anywhere too close to it.
Great pictures, and very rare camera picked of a pathway not completing, you are indeed fortunate. I’m sure there’s descriptions of the event that you caught, but it’s the best a layperson like myself can do. Absolutely Cool.