Lightning
August 24, 2007
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Lightning on 24-Aug-2007.
1) Photographing lightning by hand is hard.
2) I’m not sure why the lightning has a hole in it. Either I was really lucky and caught something weird, or it’s water or some other object on the lens. I think it’s probably the latter, even though I’d really prefer the former. I also have never seen water distort in a way which would distort that way, I don’t think. Opinions?
Now that the storm has passed and sirens have stopped sounding I can go to Costco and then get some Thai.
leader?
I think it’s called a “leader”. When charge builds up enough for a strike, tiny little “leaders” stream up from potential strike spots. One of the leaders is either strong enough or close enough to the charge in the cloud that it makes connection and ZAP. I’m sure that’s a terrible explanation, but that’s the rough idea.
Re: leader?
I was thinking that might be it, but the odds of me catching that are damned slim.
I’ll dig into it a bit more later and see.
Hi-res blowup of the “connecting” section might be useful in determining the cause…
Click on the image on this page and you can see.
I don’t think its water, as I can’t see any distortion on that spot on the following three images, all taken within the next three minutes.
I just tried emailing a guy at NASA’s lightning research stuff, but it bounced.
Yeah, it’s just kind of odd, because all the pics I’ve seen of leaders usually show the leader from the ground being a lot less intense than the sky bolt, only becoming equally intense when the two meet and the real current flows. In your picture, they appear to be similar in brightness and width before actually creating continuity.
What happens isn’t that lightning goes straight down to zap something, there’s a charge coming from the ground that rises up (like hair when you’re charged with static electricity) from things (like tree’s, houses, people….) and the tallest one wins (Or the one coming down from the sky connects to) through which the electricity flows.
Or something.
What he said. Lightning actually comes UP from the ground, so the effect is often several pulsating streamers kind of like those rising tesla coil sparks you see in frankenstein movies and novelty gift shops.