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SPRITES AND TROLLS AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: We all know what comes out of the bottom of thunderclouds: lightning. But rarely do we see what comes out of the top. On August 10th, astronauts onboard the International Space Station were perfectly positioned to observe red sprites dancing atop a cluster of storms in Mexico. They snapped this incredible photo: This shows just how high sprites can go. The photo shows their red forms reaching all the way from the thunderstorm below to a layer of green airglow some 100 km above Earth's surface. This means sprites touch the edge...

Forty students and four Ranger instructors in the swamp phase of Ranger School were struck by lightning Wednesday afternoon. All 44 were evacuated to a local hospital, but many were discharged, according to a press release from Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade. Eleven soldiers remained hospitalized Thursday evening, according to a news report. “At the time of the incident, they were conducting lightning-protection protocols when lightning struck nearby,” the release states.

In the week after nine people were shot dead at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, six churches with predominately black congregations in five Southern states have burned. Three of the fires are being investigated as arson.(excerpt)

Teravainen and Antoine Vermette scored 1:58 apart late in the third period, and the Blackhawks rallied to stun the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-1 on Wednesday night.

The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the New York Rangers 2-0 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the second time. The Lightning, who won the best-of-7 series 4-3, either will host the Chicago Blackhawks, who have won the Stanley Cup twice in the past five seasons, or visit the Anaheim Ducks, who won it in 2007, in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; NBC). Tampa Bay defeated the Calgary Flames in seven games to win the 2004 Stanley Cup.

Video contains brief strong language. Viewer discretion is advised. Several years after witnessing a bolt of lightning strike a church near his home, Grand Isle, Maine, teen Carl Bouley grabbed his camcorder during a recent storm in hopes of capturing a similar event. Sure enough, the lens was trained on St. Gerard-Mount Carmel Parish – the same church hit in 2007 – at the precise moment lightning struck its steeple.

This frightening picture of two brothers with their hair on end was snapped just minutes before they were struck by lightning at Moro Rock, California, leaving the younger boy with third-degree burns and another man dead.  Electrical charges in the atmosphere just before a strike can lift hair into the air, providing nature's last warning of a bolt from the blue.These boys, 18 and 12, didn't know that, and the image has spread rapidly across the web this month.  The story behind the classic 1975 picture has come to light on the blog of Michael McQuilken, the teenager on the...

A hair-raising video has emerged that a car full of masked robbers exploding moments after they raided a church in Russia - and witnesses insist they were hit by lightning. The dash cam footage uploaded by YouTube user World News TV, shows a vehicle speeding along with a police siren sounding in the background. All of a sudden the car bursts into flames and explodes, sending debris all over the road.

On Monday, Vice President Joe Biden promised that President Barack Obama would "do an awful lot" for illegal immigrants with executive actions toward amnesty. He said if Republicans don't "see the lord" on immigration after the midterm elections, then they will feel some "lightning." According to pool reports, Biden spoke at a Hispanic Heritage Month reception at his residence and reportedly called up a student who had received temporary amnesty due to Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Biden then said that Obama is going to enact executive amnesty before the end of the year if Congress does...

The Los Angeles Fire Department was investigating reports that as many as seven people had been struck by lightning at Venice Beach and were injured when a rare series of thunderstorms hit the Southern California area on Sunday afternoon.

A spectacular light show blazed over Chicago on Monday night as forks of lightning repeatedly stuck three of the city's most iconic towers at the same time. A powerful storm system swept through the Midwest last night where tornado and flood warnings were issued. The fierce weather also brought frequent lightning bolts which hit the Willis, Trump and Hancock towers all at once along the Chicago skyline.

ATLANTA, Ga. — An Atlanta man is lucky to be alive after lightning went right through his foot, actually blowing him out of his shoes. [....] His kids think he’s pretty cool.

SALT LAKE CITY, International Airport on Wednesday leading to the cancellations of several flights. Eleven inbound planes were struck and maintenance teams are working to determine the exact extent of the damage. One United Airlines flight was hit and the rest of the planes were all arriving Delta flights. "I think its reassuring to know that the airlines do look at the aircraft after a mention is made that there could have been a lightning strike and that they can withstand it," Salt Lake International Airport spokeswoman Barbara Gann told ABC 4. Even though the strikes likely occurred while the...

Optical scientists at the University of Arizona and University of Central Florida have developed a new type of laser technology capable of sending high-intensity beams through the atmosphere much farther than what was previously possible. The research, which was recently published in the journal Nature Photonics, is still in the laboratory phase. However, with further development, this technology could be used to divert lightning bolts away from buildings in the future. Here’s how that works. When the laser is fired, the high intensity beam leaves a channel of plasma (ionized molecules stripped of their electrons) in its wake. This column...

An Oakland woman who was struck by lightning during Monday's storm that dumped down on the Bay Area says she's doing fine. Terry McSweeney reports.A California woman who was struck by lightning during Monday's storm that dumped down on the Bay Area says she's doing fine. Emily Davis said she has a lingering metallic taste in her mouth and that her teeth hurt a bit after the bizarre event. She got checked out by a healthcare provider on Tuesday. The 31-year-old woman says she was struck by lightning on Monday afternoon as she was crossing Adeline Street in Berkeley. $425M...

<p>Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.</p> <p>Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain.</p>

Lightning has broken a finger off the right hand of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Father Omar, rector of the shrine that holds the statue, told the Globo radio station that lightning frequently strikes the nearly 100-foot tall statue, a symbol of Rio that overlooks the Brazilian city from the peak of the Corcovado mountain. Its right hand had been damaged sometime ago, but the finger finally broke off in a storm late Thursday.

Counting Earth's Age in Lightning Strikes by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Scientists recently studied the Drakensberg Range in South Africa, discovering that lightning likely damages mountain surfaces far more often than previously thought. Lightning also generates fulgarites, and these two finds call into question old age assignments for Earth's land features. Publishing in the journal Geomorphology, Jasper Knight and Stefan Grab observed that just one lightning strike can gouge a huge divide through solid bedrock. Such a strike partially melts the rocks adjacent to cracks, causing the rock's magnetic minerals to reorient themselves to the direction of Earth's magnetic field....

An amateur astronomer has become the first person to capture a massive lightning strike ‘into space’ above the British Isles. The atmospheric phenomena, known as sprites, had never been recorded in the UK before an amateur astronomer in East Yorkshire managed to take the photographic first. Richard Kacerek, 33, spotted the sprite – caused by an upward lightning discharge five miles east of Hull – and has sparked excitement in the scientific community with his image. An amateur astronomer has become the first person to capture a massive lightning strike ‘into space’ (pictured) above the British Isles An amateur astronomer...

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire. "A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' Bortnikov spoke of 'extremist sites [that] contained detailed instructions of waging the forest jihad and stressed that such a...