High speed cameras give us a new look at lightning. Here's a link to the story:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2009-02-22-lightning-cameras_N.htm?csp=15
Wow! What a light show.
Simply amazing!
One of those pictures didn't look real.
Thanks for posting this link, Brian. Beautiful!
Lightning is one of the things I miss about living in the Midwest. In fact, there's one lightning phenomenon I've never seen since I was a kid growing up in Milwaukee: heat lightning. On a really, really hot and humid night in the middle of summer, you can see faint waves of non-contact lightning spread out laterally in a nearly cloudless sky, with no thunder at all. I don't entirely know what the physics of that are, but I've never seen it anywhere else.
Still, there was nothing like the big ol', tree shakin', summer thunderstorms. I know we get to see thunderheads here, mostly in the winter months, pluming over the deserts, but sometimes I crave the thrill of not knowing when the power is going to shut off, or the anticipation of watching a big storm move in on R.A.D.A.R., or that blinding and dizzying moment of realization that a bolt of lightning just struck something not fifty yards from your own house. (One time my parents physically had to stop me from sneaking out and sitting down in an aluminum patio chair to watch the storm. ;D)
Of course, I wouldn't wish on anyone all the destruction that can come with these, too--especially when tornadoes are involved. But I'd still like to see lightning shows in San Diego more often than we get 'em.
I spoke with a friend of mine over the weekend, who lives in Colorado Springs. It was blizzard like conditions last week. While it was snowing, they had thunder and lightning. Now THAT is some amazing weather.
Here's a cool video of lightening in slow motion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0XkNfTyR9A&feature=related
Wow, that was cool. Lightning is so strange. Make you feel very small and vulnerable when a big storm like that sweeps by.
it's one of the things I miss most about the south. The lightening storms were beyond amazing!