Possible Ball Lightning

[Stephen Levine]

While savoring a splendid lighting storm during the pre-dawn hours on Friday, August 21, 2009 I may have captured on film some ball lightning. I've tried to attach the photos to this post through the "manage attachments" link and don't know if this worked.

In any event, the photos gleaned from slow motion video capture show a bright light just above ground level that began just before any visible lighting took place. The light lasted through a series of bolts - the 2nd photo shows a big bolt near the light source - and then continued considerably after any visible lightning existed whatsoever. The light remained as a consistant circle, and unlike power flashes, it did not flicker, change intensity or colors.

This is the second time that I have seen such an occurance. The first time was back in 2007 west of McKinney Tx where a big bubble-like ball of light appeared just above tree level in conjunction with a regular bolt and again seemed to exist independent of the bolt.

I welcome your thoughts about this.

If the photos did not come out on S.T. , feel free to see them plus other lightning shots on my blog site www.joyfulstormhunting.com

 

[Jason Foster]

When and where (exactly) was the photo/image taken? What direction were you looking? In other photos I see water, where you on a bridge? I suspect some other building or other situation is to explain for this. You said this is from "film", did you mean video or photo film? Would love to see the video if there was any.

I have seen all sorts of similar situations with everything from cars (headlights), to airport lights, transfers that have short but continuous arcs, producing light for up to 10 or more seconds. I've see transformers catch fire. If it was on a lake, could it possibly have been a boat with a search light? Could it have been a lighthouse light of sorts? Any of these I would suspect first.

Disclosure: I am not a believer of ball lightning.

 

[Skip Talbot]

That is quite interesting Stephen. Can you post the video you shot in addition to these frame grabs?

The skeptic in me says it might be a light that went on for a few moments on the other side of the lake. I did load the grab into a photo editor though, and that point has about the same intensity and hue as the adjacent CG strike. They both share a blue-violet hue, and although that might not mean much, I think if there was a difference it might point more towards this being a ground based light.

Was there any noise that you could hear from it? It looks like you were fairly far from it, so you probably couldn't hear it.

It wasn't moving was it? If it wasn't I'd say this is more likely to be St. Elmo's fire coming off the top of a tree across the lake.

I'm also interested in that glowing mist. Can you post video of that?

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thank you, Gentlemen for your interest and your response.

The video was shot about 4 am from my side of the lake. The other side of the lake where the light and lightning took place is about 5 miles away by air.

Normally that specific land zone across the lake is open and dark at night with no lights shining in the area where the light was filmed.

In addition, I have never seen a light from a boat anywhere approaching that intensity from an even closer distance to where the opposite shore exists.

The intriquing thing is that the light didn't change it's intensity or shape from the time before the lightning struck through the actual strike and onward to the completion of the lightning and then after that.

I don't quite know how to load video up into Storm Track or anywhere else at this point, as I am just learning how to utilize the Moviemaker software program- and welcome suggestions- and also have concern about copyright procedures.

 

[Eric Flescher]

ball lightning

Post it on youtube.
Also what color was it?

::

Thank you, Gentlemen for your interest and your response.

The video was shot about 4 am from my side of the lake. The other side of the lake where the light and lightning took place is about 5 miles away by air.

Normally that specific land zone across the lake is open and dark at night with no lights shining in the area where the light was filmed.

In addition, I have never seen a light from a boat anywhere approaching that intensity from an even closer distance to where the opposite shore exists.

The intriquing thing is that the light didn't change it's intensity or shape from the time before the lightning struck through the actual strike and onward to the completion of the lightning and then after that.

I don't quite know how to load video up into Storm Track or anywhere else at this point, as I am just learning how to utilize the Moviemaker software program- and welcome suggestions- and also have concern about copyright procedures.

 

[cdcollura]

Good evening,

. . .I am not a believer of ball lightning.

Maybe this is a power flash?

 

[Jason Foster]

Stephen:

The main reason for asking the specific location (hell, what lake was it?) is that a quick peak at aerial photography might reveal roads and such. I've been able to debunk so many things (completely different scenarios) and mysteries with aerials photographs I've come to enjoy the task. Not saying it'll disprove anything here per say...was more of just something I wanted to do.

 

[Martin Kucera]

Does look like a power flash.

 

[Stephen Levine]

Stephen:

The main reason for asking the specific location (hell, what lake was it?) is that a quick peak at aerial photography might reveal roads and such. I've been able to debunk so many things (completely different scenarios) and mysteries with aerials photographs I've come to enjoy the task. Not saying it'll disprove anything here per say...was more of just something I wanted to do.

Thank you, Jason; I deeply appreciate your desire to be a Sherlock Holms on this. The lake is located on the E. side of Garland, W. side of Rockwall and NW side of Somerville, TX; the major highway is I-30. (all east of downtown Dallas)
The photo was shot just E. of south across the lake from the Garland side.

 

[Bill Hark]

Thanks for posting. I am not sure what you photographed but it is very interesting. Maybe ball lightning. I had always thought that ball lightning is a smaller and somewhat dimmer phenomena and is usually seen at close range.

Bill Hark

 

[Darren Addy]

Thanks for posting this puzzle here Stephen. Looks like it was a fun night!

However, I'm a wee bit confused on one point: On your blog, when you mouse over the first picture you see it is called "first save". The 2nd image is called "second save". The next two are "fifth save" and "sixth save". (So far, so good... in a numerical sequence) Then you've got the image that is all black except for the little spot of light. It is called "ninth save". Then the following image (bolt plus spot of light) is called "eighth save".

Besides being (apparently) out of sequence, the "ninth save" image has a different copyright name (the others are all "Stephen Eric Levine" and in the same font. This one is in a different font and says only "Stephen Levine"). The proportions of the "ninth save" image are also different from the others (length to height).

Just wondering which sequence of images is correct... the way they are shown or the way they are named... and what would account for it being different than the others in proportion and copyright style?

I would think that the same procedure should be used in creating each image from the video... one that would result in the same exact image size (dimensions and resolution) and with no cropping on one that the others did not get... just to make apples-to-apples comparisons easier.

One other question... is this something you also noticed in "real time" or only upon reviewing the video or making the still captures from the video?

 

[Stephen Levine]

Thanks for posting this puzzle here Stephen. Looks like it was a fun night!

However, I'm a wee bit confused on one point: On your blog, when you mouse over the first picture you see it is called "first save". The 2nd image is called "second save". The next two are "fifth save" and "sixth save". (So far, so good... in a numerical sequence) Then you've got the image that is all black except for the little spot of light. It is called "ninth save". Then the following image (bolt plus spot of light) is called "eighth save".

Besides being (apparently) out of sequence, the "ninth save" image has a different copyright name (the others are all "Stephen Eric Levine" and in the same font. This one is in a different font and says only "Stephen Levine"). The proportions of the "ninth save" image are also different from the others (length to height).

Just wondering which sequence of images is correct... the way they are shown or the way they are named... and what would account for it being different than the others in proportion and copyright style?

I would think that the same procedure should be used in creating each image from the video... one that would result in the same exact image size (dimensions and resolution) and with no cropping on one that the others did not get... just to make apples-to-apples comparisons easier.

One other question... is this something you also noticed in "real time" or only upon reviewing the video or making the still captures from the video?

Thank you for looking deeply into this, Darren.. This is a brand new system and I was learning how to utilize it as I went along. Thus, I didn't save the photos in exact sequence; just followed my mood so to speak as I went through the video a couple times. In addition I saved these in two different sessions, as the first video feed was in standard def, and I later learned that my software is able to take HD. So I only saved one or two frames from the standard def and the rest were from the HD feed.

In playing the original video frame by frame the following showed up:
1. The bright small distant light at tree level, with an extremely dim- almost invisible distant C-G bolt to it's right rear.
2. Total darkness with just the light shining - posted on ST
3. A pulsing brilliant bolt next to the light which is unchanged in intensity - posted on ST (photo cropped)
4. The light remains after the bolt disappears, all by itself.

Short of getting this on You Tube, which I haven't figured out how to do as well as how to to put the copyright, etc. on, this is as exact as I find my self able to portrey this episode at present.

 

[Isaac Pato]

If you ask me, that light looks like it could be from a house on the other side of the lake. Maybe a few close CGs woke someone up over there. I'd check Google maps to see what—if anything is on that side of the lake.

 

[Dan Robinson]

1. The bright small distant light at tree level, with an extremely dim- almost invisible distant C-G bolt to it's right rear.

This may be the key piece of info pointing to a power flash (flashover event). Many video cameras occasionally 'miss' the quick first return stroke of a CG. When this happens, there are no frames with the visible first return stroke. I don't know exactly why this happens, but it is related to the 'ghosting' issue where a bolt gets shifted downward on the first return stroke frame. One theory is that the invisible ones are shifted so far downward to not get recorded on the frame.

At any rate, a point of light that shows up at the start of a CG and lingers afterward is a telltale flashover event.

I did a write-up on this a few years ago:

http://www.wvlightning.com/powerflash.shtml

Some YouTube examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ikvJrf_XYE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAezrc-ygjU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjhgDh-ENdw

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

 

[D. Hayes]

several said power flash and I have to agree. I captured one last year but was lucky and got the g-c stroke that initiated the event. Otherwise it would look exactly like you described.