Free Republic

Investigators fear a £100million F-35 fighter jet crashed into the Mediterranean while taking off because the cheap rain covers had not been taken off properly. Officials believe the rain cover was sucked into the F-35B Lightning II stealth plane's engine as it took off from the flight deck of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, forcing the pilot to eject. Naval personnel reported seeing the cover floating in the sea nearby Britain's flagship aircraft carrier after the accident in the Mediterranean on Sunday. Sources said the RAF pilot realised the issue and tried to abort take-off but was unable to stop the...

Another possibility is being investigated in a case that one sheriff has called the most mysterious of his career. Responding agencies treated the scene as a hazmat situation because of uncertainty about the cause of the fatalities, and everything from toxic algae to dangerous mine gasses to murder has been probed. According to a New York Times feature on the family, now lightning strikes have been added into the mix. A handful of causes of death have been ruled out. Previous autopsy data provided by the Mariposa County Sheriff's Office excluded acute trauma, such as stabbing, gunshot wounds or blunt-force...

A man from Robertson County, Tennessee was playing a video game on Saturday night during a storm when a nearby lightning strike resulted in him being shocked straight up the wire of his controller. He was able to make the call, and when ambulance crews arrived, they found that he didn’t appear injured, “wanted to be checked out to make sure he was not injured” and didn’t need to be transported to a local hospital. And while this might sound like a one-in-a-million kind of event, it was just last year that Karma, a pro Rocket League player, was playing...

A George Floyd mural in Toledo, Ohio, was destroyed by what witnesses say was a lightning strike, police told WTVG-TV. What are the details? The building wall upon which the mural was painted collapsed, the station said, adding that WTVG's Doppler radar showed a lightning strike around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in the block where the building — which used to house the Mugshots Bar — is located. In the aftermath, the station said Toledo police were seen outside the building and setting up tape around the pile of bricks upon which the artwork was crafted. The building itself is structurally...

Local media reports that the “north Toledo mural has been reduced to rubble” after reportedly being struck by lightning. Fire and rescue responded to the previous site of the mural, but were unable to render aid to the collapsed wall featuring Floyd’s face. “A witness who saw the wall fold told TFRD they had seen a lightning bolt strike the building,” local media reported. “The department later confirmed the strike to be the cause of the collapse.” Video indicates the mural was created on July 10, 2020, meaning the idol to George Floyd lasted just over one year before being...

Lightning has killed at least 38 people across two Indian states over the past 24 hours, officials said Monday. Many of the deaths occurred in the western state of Rajasthan, where 11 people died after being struck by lightning near a watchtower at the 12th century Amber Fort, police said. Senior police officer Anand Srivastava said some of the victims were taking selfies near the watchtower when lightning struck late Sunday. The Indian Meteorological Department has warned of more lightning in the next two days. Lightning strikes are common during India's monsoon season, which runs from June to September. More...

As one of Japan’s most active volcanoes, Sakurajima often dazzles with spectacular displays of volcanic lightning set against an ash-filled sky. But the volcano can also produce much smaller, invisible bursts of electrical activity that mystify and intrigue scientists. Now, an analysis of 97 explosions at Sakurajima from June 2015 is helping to show when eruptions produce visible lightning strokes versus when they produce the mysterious, unseen surges of electrical activity, researchers report in the June 16 Geophysical Research Letters. These invisible bursts, called vent discharges, happen early in eruptions, which could allow scientists to figure out ways to use...

When President Joe Biden took Ford’s electric F-150 Lightning pickup for a test drive in Dearborn, Mich., in May, the event was more than a White House photo op. It marked a new phase in an accelerating shift from gas-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles, or EVs. In recent months, global auto manufacturers have released plans to electrify their vehicle fleets by 2030 or 2035, setting up a race to see who can most quickly shift entirely away from producing vehicles powered by gasoline. , I see this moment as pivotal because unlike EVs from manufacturers such as Toyota...

VIDEOSometime after 4:30 PM EDT on June 20, I heard a lot of thunder outside here in Broward County. When I opened my door to check I was somewhat surprised. Not by the rain clouds above but by the fact that the air felt very dry and warm. This is unusual in that we don't normally feel dry air here in South Florida where humid is the norm. Also of interest was that the wind was quite high gusting up to about 40 mph. When warm dry air rushes up against rain clouds the result is a lot of electricity...

A link below to the 10 minute+ 1st Impression Video, by Sandy Munro of Munro & Associates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGqVd2-ltM8

Central Florida still has the most strikes per kilometer, however. A lack of lightning in South Florida and the Panhandle bring Florida’s average down. Florida always had a reputation for having the most lightning strikes — at least until now. Oklahoma has overtaken the Sunshine State with slightly more lightning bolts per square kilometer over the last five years, according to Vaisala, a Finnish environmental monitoring company. The margin between the states was slim. Florida’s 82.8 strikes per kilometer over the last five years barely edged Oklahoma’s 83.4 flashes. Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist with Vaisala, told the Washington Post that...

(International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/A. Smith) ============================================================ In a stormy Hawaiian sky in July 2017, streaks of red and blue lightning seemed to meet above a bed of white light. Cameras on the Gemini North telescope at the Gemini Observatory in Mauna Kea snapped a stunning picture of the multi-colored light show. The National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) released the photo on Wednesday as its "image of the week". The lightning in the image "appears so otherworldly that it looks like it must be a special effect," NOIRLab said. It also published a zoomable version. These colorful lightning phenomena are aptly...

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but maybe bad luck does. Aumauinuuese Puni was suddenly struck by lightening while standing on a rooftop in April of 2020. He was on the roof of a building in Waikiki where he worked and doing a Facebook Live about the view of Diamond Head during some rainy weather. At the start of his livestream, he briefly mentions the possibility of being struck by lightning while standing out in the open. Shortly after, Puni found himself in that exact situation when lightening struck his body causing him to drop his phone....

Australia has been hit by more than 2.24 million lightning strikes in just 48 hours as wild weather battered the east coast over the weekend. Storms and damaging winds up to 100km/h wreaked havoc in multiple states, with volunteers responding to hundreds of calls for help. The weather bureau said most of the 2.24 million lightning strikes were recorded in Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory, with more storms expected this week. The same wave of extreme weather slammed Southern Australia with more than 120,000 lightning strikes on October 22, 2020. In Melbourne’s outer east a woman aged in her...

People across the Bay Area woke to a wild mix of thunder, lightning, high winds and heavy rain early Sunday morning, as thunderstorms moved across the region before sunrise. Dry lightning was in the forecast, but the thunderstorms were more severe and wet than expected and, at the end of a week marked by dry heat, the weather was a surprise for many. The weather was also unusual for California, which sees little storm activity in the summer months. Hundreds of lightning strikes were recorded, National Weather Service forecaster Drew Peterson said at 5 a.m. "We’re seeing nonstop continuous lightning...

The new records for “megaflashes”, verified with new satellite lightning imagery technology, more than double the previous values measured in the United States of America and France. The findings were published by the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters ahead of International Lightning Safety Day on 28 June. WMO’s Committee on Weather and Climate Extremes, which maintains official records of global, hemispheric and regional extremes found that: The world’s greatest extent for a single lightning flash is a single flash that covered a horizontal distance of 709 ± 8 km (440.6 ± 5 mi) across parts of southern Brazil on...

In a March 15, 2020 article about a bear encounter by Caroline Wellbery, a bear biologist makes a hyperbolic claim. It is not unusual for people to make hyperbolic claims about bears, which are not founded in facts or data. It is irresponsible for experts in the field to do so. From the washingtonpost.com: There is a bigger chance of getting hit twice by lightning, Craighead says, than being mauled by a bear. As with any statistical assessment, it depends on a number of assumptions. If you are talking about the United States as a whole, Craighead's claim is...

One rarely-visited site surveyed, known as Site XI or Airigh na Beinne Bige, now consists of a single standing stone on an exposed hillside overlooking the great circle. Geophysics revealed that not only was the stone originally part of a circle of standing stones, but also that there was a massive, star-shaped magnetic anomaly in the centre – either the result of a single, large lighting strike or many smaller strikes on the same spot. Project leader Dr Richard Bates, of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, said: “Such clear evidence for lightning...

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said President Donald Trump would be forced to resign if the Senate were to call any one of four people to testify in the upcoming impeachment trial. Scaramucci, who served less than two weeks in the Trump administration in 2017, remarked that Trump couldn't "handle the heat of that testimony" Saturday morning as a panelist on MSNBC's AM Joy, hosted by Joy Reid. At the start of the discussion, Scaramucci went after Senate Republicans, whom he accused of "allowing" Trump to break the law. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell previously sparked outrage among...

Horrifying surveillance footage shows the moment a man is struck by lightning while walking his three dogs in Texas. Alexander Coreas is seen in the video, shared by Stuebner Airline Veterinary Hospital, on Thursday evening around 7pm walking his German Shepherd's, Sophie, Honey and Hazel. Coreas is shown struck by a flash of lightning that sends him crashing to the ground. His three terrified dogs are seen running away as he remained motionless on the cement.