Possible ball lightning video

[Bill Hark]

This video was shot on July 17 on one of Roger Hill's tours northwest of Watertown, South Dakota. Check out the ?ball lighting that comes out of the cloud after a lightning flash. It was seen by a couple of the participants who weren't focused on the wall cloud and luckily someone had also been filming. I don't know what it is but definitely interesting to ponder.

(the object is at about 1 minute into the video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qevVKCIAdwM


Bill Hark

 

[Nick Nolte]

wow, that is really extraordinary. It's interesting that it is in his frame, but you can't hear anyone say anything about it. You'd think if someone saw that in real time one would exclaim, "Did you see that!?"

Makes me wonder what he thought when he saw that when reviewing the video, lol.

 

[Jeff Duda]

I forget where the article I saw this was, but recently I read an article saying something towards the effect that ball lightning is not physically real but is a manifestation of a sensory impulse in humans. Also, I wonder if that object is just a camera artifact.

 

[Nick Nolte]

I forget where the article I saw this was, but recently I read an article saying something towards the effect that ball lightning is not physically real but is a manifestation of a sensory impulse in humans. Also, I wonder if that object is just a camera artifact.

There was an article posted here a few months ago about that: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=23982&highlight=ball+lightning

 

[Jeff Duda]

There was an article posted here a few months ago about that: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=23982&highlight=ball+lightning

That's the one! Thanks.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

Also, I wonder if that object is just a camera artifact.

The phenomenon was witnessed visually by numerous people.

 

[Danny Neal]

I am highly skeptical... but that was pretty cool to see.

 

[Rob H]

Wow! I was in that area and I saw something very similar, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same flash they saw. I remember saying to my chase partner "I think I just saw ball lightning!" and we both kind of laughed it off because what are the odds of that, right?

 

[Frank Kienast]

If that is a real object, it has to be traveling hundreds of miles per hour based on how fast it fell.

 

[Andy Jackson]

If it's not ball lightning then it's some sort of strange discharge of electricity (which is what ball lightning is anyway). It does seem to follow a curved path.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

The video is interesting but looks like something from the camera caused by the bright lightning strike. In this video below this ball lightning near Boulder, CO last quite a while comapred to that brief streak of ball shaped light across the frame. Maybe they can be very brief but from what I have read up on ball lightning they tend to last longer sometimes in minutes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ioN-3UWYrY

I find ball lightning to be incredibly interesting and one of the things I hope to see while storm chasing someday. I have read incredible and almost unbelievable accounts of people having strange encounters with ball lightning. One such from the book "Extreme Weather" which is an awesome book one of the few I have actually read has a story about a plane flying over Atlanta in 1962 that had ball lightning strike the plane leaving behind burn spots and a hole in the radome as well as a horrid ozone smell.

Another story from a Toledo, OH resident during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak recalls as he watched a tornado after dark ball lightning descended from the funnel and began floating down the middle of the street with brilliant colors about five feet from the ground eventually heading for the front door of his home where it burned a large hole in the door and also left an racid ozone smell.

Are they real or made up who knows but I tell you what it is very interesting none the less and not the only reports out there. There are dozens of them.

 

[David Wolfson]

It's a very interesting something! I think some appeal to physical principles is in order, though. It seems to show a rather sizable blob at some considerable distance from the camera that has the same luminosity as the white clouds (rather than glowing) and that seems to descend from cloud base to ground in less than a second. For it to have borne any relation to the immediately previous lightning, it would have to have been propelled at the ground with a velocity greater than the speed of sound and be sufficiently dense and massive to maintain that velocity. These observations don't add up for me either electo- or hydro-dynamically.

Pending somebody doing frame-by-frame analysis, I'd place my bet on something more like a bird having hit the overhead wires a few pole-lengths away (or a bug a few feet away) entirely coincidental to the lightning.

 

[Mark Blue]

I find ball lightning to be incredibly interesting and one of the things I hope to see while storm chasing someday.

You'll have to do your dissertation on this subject when you go off to college Michael and be the scientific pioneer that shatters the myth about this phenomena with some hard core research.

 

[James Hammett]

Psh, I had written something much longer but accidentally clicked a link and lost it. In short, it doesn't appear to be a camera artifact, too luminous for a nearby insect, and too erratic and fast for a bird at a distance. Only electricity could move that fast unless it's actually something much closer to the camera than it appears (except it follows the horizon perfectly). It would be interesting to see the uncompressed video and hear from other eyewitnesses.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

In short, it doesn't appear to be a camera artifact, too luminous for a nearby insect, and too erratic and fast for a bird at a distance.

Again, it was visually witnessed by numerous people in the same place.