Slow-Motion Lightning Video

In this amazing video, a slow-motion camera captures the strange and beautiful electricity dance that is a lightning strike. (h/t BuzzFeed)

[WATCH]

Comments

[ztresearch]

This video was taken by me, Tom A. Warner. The original version posted on YouTube was done so without permission or credit and has been removed. You can see this video and others along with explanations at my website www.ztresearch.com.

[longnow]

The invasion begins.

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

The bright points that lead the tendrils appear to be the fabled "ball lightning". Generally dismissed because there is no recorded evidence of the claims of sightings of ball lightning, they are considered merely folk tales.

Ball lightning reports describe it as a glowing orb that floats around after a lightning strike.

[gorideabike]

Once upon a time the US Forest Service let me work on a lookout tower in the Gila National Forest. The Gila NF is located on the western New Mexico border with Arizona between Silver City, Quemado, and Datil. The tower was one of the newer designs with metal framework and a catwalk. It got hit a lot. So anyway, there was a nice steel flagpole on the northeast corner of the tower. On top of the flagpole was a round ball. When friends came to visit, it was great fun to take them out on the catwalk when storms were gathering. The tower would start humming and a blue glow could be seen at the top of the flag pole. Then lightning would strike maybe ten or fifteen miles away and a ball of pure blue energy would go hissing off the flagpole ball to where ever the lightning had struck.
The Very Large Array radio telescope is located on the Plains of San Augustin because it is one of the flattest places in the world. The contour map harldly has any lines. A rancher told me that the moo cows grazing there would stand with their butts to the wind in a storm. I never saw this, but he told me that St. Elmo's fire would build up on the cows' backs and ball lightning would roll off the points of their horns.
Some stuff just isn't on TeeVee. Peace

[Big0725]

This is just more evidence on just how truly insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. We have nothing that could remotely come close to doing this and this can happen a few hundred times in an average thunderstorm.

And why is it called a "thunderstorm"? If it weren't for the lightning, there would be no thunder.

Why do I ask meaningless questions?

Screw it, it's happy hour!!

[Old Writer]

Makes me think that if one of these suckers
had hit old kite-flying Benjamin Franklin,
we would have lost him
and probably lost the War of Independence
that Franklin funded by sailing to France,
where he was a super superstar,
and hitting up King Louis XVI for the cash.

howwritecomedy.com

[Lee Stranahan - Huffpost Blogger]

A friend of mine who does effects work pointed out what appears to be a hard matte line that's visible on the left hand side, about halfway down when the first flash hits. It's a perfectly straight line that seems to cut off part of effects...

So - do we know for sure this isn't CGI? I see the line, too....

[rationalist]

Your friend should read up a bit about YouTube's flash video compression. What he is commenting on are common artifacts of video compression common to low quality clips you see on the web.

[Lee Stranahan - Huffpost Blogger]

The compression you're talking about is blocky and noisy - it wouldn't produce a perfectly straight line that cuts off other elements...and the occurs in the same spot. Might be something else, but it's not compression.

[JBS]

http://krisabel.ctv.ca/blog/_archives/2008/8/8/3829525.html

[SiriusMrE]

A novel way to understand lightning: http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040927earth-capacitor.htm

[ohiomark]

I don't know how anyone could think, especially after watching a video like that, that we could control the climate.

[Hayduke1969]

That was a complete non sequitor.

We can control the climate by pumping billions of tons of heat trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmoshpere.

What was your point again?

[Gasparilla]

Exactly. It shows the simplistic level that some of these people operate on. The logical conclusion of what ohiomark is saying is that nothing we do, no matter how much pollution, makes any difference. It's a denial of basic science. Guess he missed seventh grade.

[KillTheMessenger]

Nobody says we are controlling the climate. We are just altering it. Control means that one can change things at will. We are, as of now, not able to stop altering the climate. Which means we are not in control.

Anyway... if you knew a little bit about lightning, you would know that the total energy in that lightning bolt is about as much as in a couple of tanks of gasoline. Which means that the total amount of electricity could be stored in the battery the size of a small closet. Which means that we are very well capable of making and altering lightning technologically if we have to (see your lightning rod, for instance).

And do I really have to mention that lightning has nothing to do with climate, anyway?

[Trittydi]

Look at that sucker find its path and watch how the power builds. God I love that crap. I could watch it forever.
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[Trittydi]

I just love a powlerful lightening storm.
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[Novista]

Wait til you see the darkening storm, called the former American economy.

[Mykel]

BITCHIN!

[Pupadup4oBama]

beautiful - I saw lightening like that once - except it spread ACROSS the sky as opposed to up and down. It was quite spectacular.

[Mango]

Great shot!

But for heaven's sake I wish whoever took it would have included an explanation of its time duration and whatever else could be told about the event.

[Trittydi]

They say it's slow-motion. The strike might have actually lasted a second or two I suppose.
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[Big0725]

That's very possible, leaning towards probable.

[ceasenake]

Amazing and beautiful!

[Troubledwawa]

Nice.

It looks like the second bolt followed one of the first bolt's path, that was drifting to the Earth.

Perhaps from the ground up?

[humanoid]

I remember reading somewhere that lightning generally flows from the ground up to the sky, rather than vice versa. It looks like the electricity is searching various routes from the sky to the ground, and when it locates the best route, then the energy flows in reverse. What struck me as most surprising is that, once the lightning has found its route, it doesn't waver or move around.

Is there anybody here who actually knows something about lightning who can clarify what's happening here?

[talidapali]

Try this NOAA site.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/ltgcenter/ltgmain.html

[lenski]

The search for a path proceeds through the treelike process that shows early in the video, finding the thin trails that are of somewhat lower resistance than clear air. Basically, a slightly higher density dust particles or raindrops allows enough current to flow to keep looking for more path. These tendrils of ionization last a little while, long enough to present a temptingly lower resistance for the main strike. It's a race to see which one completes the circuit first.

Once a path between the sky and ground has been found, that's when the action really kicks in: A surge of current flows through the slightly lower resistance pathway, blasting the outer electrons from the atoms of atmosphere in its path forming a plasma arc. The dramatically lower resistance causes it to continue passing the surge current. The electrons stripped from the atoms of the atmosphere are "free electrons" that carry the current until the lightning strike dissipates the electrical charge that started the whole process in the first place.

Here's something that was only discovered recently: Lightning strikes are such high energy events that they produce x-rays! (It makes sense, once we think about it... The process of stripping electrons away from the atoms of the atmosphere and subsequent recovery of the electron shells as the event ends would produce electromagnetic radiation, at energy levels all the way into x-rays.)

[JBS]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3214/02-works.html

[Trittydi]

A lot, if not most, lightning is actually ground to sky, if I recall correctly.

This is a great explanation - but I may be wrong - it's been a while . . . .
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