Posted on 07/30/2019 6:02:17 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
I was able to record part of an amazing heat lightning storm on the night of July 29, 2019. A very intense storm that stretched from the southern tip of Lake Okeechobee down the very center of the Florida Everglades and finally gradually Southwest to southern Monroe County on the Gulf Coast as you can see on the LightningMaps.Org video made just after I recorded my video. This video was recorded from about 9:00 PM for a 23 minute period until 9:24 PM. The storm itself began about 8 PM and lasted until about 11:30 PM. At about 11:15 PM the storm stretched over a 120 mile area straight down the central spine of Florida from Lake Okeechobee to southern Dade County.
Heat lightning is something of a misnomer since heat doesn't cause this phenomena. What you see is a reflection of regular lightning strikes off the high clouds so it can be see from 20 to over 50 miles away. In this case, since I am located about 12 miles west of the ocean, the lightning storms were 30 to 40 miles west of where I was recording this storm. As you can see, there were almost continuous lightning flashes visible, often as many as 2 or 3 per second. Based on this I estimate that at least 100 lightning flashes per minute were visible or over 7000 per hour. Therefore over the course of the whole storm which lasted nearly 5 hours, there might have been at least 40,000 to 50,000 lightning flashes.
The amazing thing is the clarity of many of these lighting strikes which the high clouds last night due to their reflection off the high clouds. When there were lower clouds cutting off a direct view, the light from the flashes were still able to be observed. The weather conditions, with the high clouds but not too many low clouds which would block a direct view allowed for the observer to see lightning flashes from such a great distance. I estimate my camera was detecting lightning flashes on a north-south axis (my camera was faced west northwest) that ran about at least 60 miles north to south. My distance from the storm plus the reflection from the clouds allowed for such magnification of the lightning strikes.
Ironically, as I write this, there is a line of lightning strikes 30 to 40 miles to the east over the Atlantic. However, those lightning strikes can't be visibly detected at this distance due to bright daylight which doesn't allow for reflection of those strikes off the clouds as happened last night.
I saw some of this last night too PJ....from mid Delray Beach..
BTW, does anybody know where I can get stats on the number of lightning strikes generated by each storm. I am estimating this storm had anywhere between 30,000 to 50,000 lightning strikes while it lasted.
Well finally we know what’s causing the reported glow bull warming nightmare. :-) I remember being at the beach when we lived in Cocoa Beach and watching the storms out over the Atlantic. Pretty awesome. Thank you Lord for providing the entertainment for us mere mortals.
I was watching from South Boca from the 4th floor. Really amazing.
And liberals think man is overpowering THAT!
I wonder how long the power from each bolt of lightning would power my air conditioner for. I know just one bolt has enough power to send Marty McFly back to the future.
I’m wondering if we can find archived LightningMaps.Org showing lightning strikes as they happened in the past. That way in the future, when I present lightning storms, I can intersperse the videos with how they appear on the maps at the same time.
Watched from my patio...beer in hand!
There might be another big lightning show but at about 4 AM tomorrow morning.
I went to the third floor balcony of a nearby condo to record this. There are also condos in the same area with 5 floors but they face south and east. I will use them for recording from when we have storms from those directions.
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