Ever seen a storm with red lightning and 100+ MPH straight-line winds? 

20 years ago, my lovely wife, my two children, and I were checking out of a hotel in Bismarck, North Dakota at 2am heading back home in northern Illinois. The desk clerk asked me which way we were going. I told her east. She pointed to the TV behind me that had the Weather Channel on indicating severe storms along our intended route and recommended we delay our departure to let the storms pass. In my cocky, overconfident ignorance... I said I am not afraid of a thunderstorm. Well buddy... two hours later we were smack dab in the middle of one of the worst, most hellish storms I've ever encountered. Straight line winds, raindrops as big as dinner plates, and golfball sized hail. I managed to stop under an overpass that acted like a venturi. The winds lifted the back of my 96 Suburban off the ground twice. The lightning was blinding and seemed to be striking everything in sight. The storm lasted for about 20 minutes... but the memories of the fear and danger I put my family through will last me a lifetime. Mother Nature will not be trifled with.

My mom use to wake us kids up in the middle of the night while dad was working midnights back in Midwest Illinois. She would turn the couch over and make a bed for us kids and we would have fun unawareof the danger. But once I looked at my mom and she was peering out through the curtains and the lightning flash on her face revealed real terror. She was protecting us.

There's something so beautifully and distinctly American about just casually filming a storm on your front porch that is literally destroying transformers and trees. 10/10

I was playing at an outdoor festival when off in the distance during our 1st set, I saw GREEN lightning. I told my son,” We better get ready to run!” 5 minutes later we were in a monsoon!!

The silence, followed by the sirens, then the wind came. Amazing build up. This would be both incredible and terrfying to witness.

I’ve seen bright green and bright blue lightning. It was quite spectacular. Unfortunately it was followed by an F4 tornado which wasn’t so great.

While at work, a massive storm came through my city. My coworker and I were closing, it was pitch black outside and out of quite literally nowhere, the wind picked up to probably 50 mph constant. There was massive thunder directly above us, it was so close and powerful that the building was violently shaking from the sound alone. We went into the basement and the power cut out leaving us in pitch black. The thunder was still so powerful that we could feel the ground shaking underneath us. There were two tornadoes that touched down about a mile away from us.

I like to sit on my back porch when it storms and just watch the chaos unfold.

There’s nothing more terrifying than a tornado at night

Thank you for not screaming and repeating, "Oh my God" over and over again. Appreciate you allowing us to hear the storm.

Here in Missouri, on the first of August, we had a derecho storm blast through at a measured 95 mph. It hit my garage door straight on, and BUCKLED the heavy steel door. I was a weather forecaster (and taught severe weather and analysis) for 30+ years. Strongest thunderstorm I have ever seen, as far as straightline winds.

It's crazy to see it from this perspective. This storm completely uprooted and changed my life. I was in my home when our massive tree fell on the house. I thought a tornado was ripping up the house behind me, looking back that doesn't make much sense of course. Definitely the scariest moment of my life. I'll never forget the aftermath of water pouring into the house, the gas leak, and watching the storm get worse out the window all while scrambling to save what we can. Then to not have power for weeks, absolutely devastating. They're still doing construction as well. And many people dealt with much worse. I'll also never forget my dad and I driving around Tulsa at 4 a.m. that night and seeing the total destruction and darkness it left behind. I saw a tree completely cover a six-lane road. Aside from tornadoes, it was by far the worst storm devastation I've seen.

Those stright line winds can be terrifying. My son, 14, is deathly afraid sever thunderstorms because one time we had an extremely severe storm roll through with hail, lightning, but almost no rain. The winds were insane. They kept building and I could hear the tornado sirens in the distance. The winds kept intensifying until it sounded like a jet engine and a freight train next to our house. I yelled at him and my wife to get in the basement. He was almost hyperventilating. After the winds subsided, we learned it was just straight line winds at almost 100 mph.

What a terrifyingly beautiful planet

That’s crazy. I work at a shopper drug mart. Our power went out at 8pm. The emergency lights lasted about 20 mins. You never realize just how spooky a store can be when it’s pitch dark. Got paid for 3 hrs just sitting in the dark. Was a crazy night, power finally came back on a little after 11pm.

I'm from Michigan and we get slammed with those straight line winds here more often than tornados. It's kinda scary because they'll come out of nowhere occasionally. No warning. 4th of July years ago one came through while the sky was blue and sunny and knocked down our neighbors massive maple, but missed ours. The tree took out part of my neighbors house, our fence, tore some of our siding, and crushed my van and the front of my mom's van. Luckily no one was hurt.

I have seen pink and green lightning before. Back in the late 1970's, we were under a Tornado Warning in central Alabama. As a weather nut, I was standing outside of the storm shelter, watching the storm go over. And I am NOT color blind. Other people saw the same thing that I did! Mother Nature can throw in some surprises sometimes!

Yes. I’ve also had lightening strike within ten feet of me. Thank god my kids and I were in my vehicle at the time. Everything went white when it happened. I hope everyone in this person’s community was safe.

I've seen strange things. I live in Ohio. One night during a storm the entire sky started changing color - uniformly, stretched from start to end, no lightening strikes and without a primary source, no blown transformers, it went from yellow to blue to green to red, just as if a veil were being switched back and forth. The single oddest thing I've ever witnessed. Not one word was said it about the next day, not from the weather stations, not from people, not in the news or social media. It was very strange. I don't do drugs and I'm mentally stable - I know what I saw.

Wow that was something. Glad you are okay though. I kept saying “ok time to go” but couldn’t stop watching. Great video. ❤❤

Assuming everyone was okay, I gotta say I love storms like this. The awesome power of nature gets my blood pumping! ⛈️⛈️

You know a sprite is extremely powerful when you can see it from beneath the cloud. Sprites only come off of positive CGs, so the corresponding bolt was also extremely potent.

Lived through something like this on September of 1998 during Labor Day, nothing is more terrifying then the sound of straight line 100+ MPH winds and Strobe lighting and sparks flying from a Transformer. But it sure did make me respect and appreciate Mother Nature a lot more rather then fear her.

Most terrifying thing. I’ve been through enough of them to know. When that siren goes off at night it’s enough to chill your soul.

I was here for this storm. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. My wife and I were huddled in our hall closet because we don’t have a storm cellar. We moved to Tulsa from Oregon ~2 years ago and this was our first major storm experience in Oklahoma. Back on Oregon, we have wildfires. It’s scary, but not in the same way as this. Miraculously, our house was not damaged (we were one of the lucky ones!). We drove around the next morning and I couldn’t believe how many massive trees were just completely ripped up out of the ground (like in the photos) and how many power poles were just snapped in half. Much of Tulsa was out of power for a week or more.

this reminds me of 2 years ago, we had a really bad storm. the lightning was pink and constant(strobe effect). They smell in the air smelled like rotten eggs. We also could hear this odd noises, almost like an animal squealing. We later found out that a tornado had crossed over our apartment building and hit a housing development 1/2 mile away from our home. I'm not sure what was the freakiest, the smell, the sound or the strobe pink lightning.

I sat on a mountain one night and watched a storm for an hour it was the most beautiful colors I have ever seen.

When I was a teenager in the early 70's a late spring storm kicked up on my way home from school, around 3:30pm. I was able to shelter under a friend's front porch but I saw the most beautiful hot pink lightning that day, I had never seen it before or since and of course never forgot it.

Some of the BEST ever audio of a good storm I have ever heard!! Lighting was also fantastic!!

Red lightning, 100+MPH winds in straight lines, heavy rain. That is a TRUE BEAST!!! And would be EPIC to capture of at my area!!!! Great EPIC video, mate!!!!

I remember being in Arkansas for vacation and it was around 105 degrees Fahrenheit that day. It came close to night and I watched from the top of my hotel as the green sky came in and the wind was howling at least 80mph. The tornado was 5 miles away but I saw a massive industrial transformer blow and a super bolt which is very rare hit a tree and it blew up everywhere. It was terrifying. The people who lived on that part of Arkansas acted like it was normal which I sort of guessed it was.

last year i was at my grandparents house when hurricane ian's eye wall hit directly around 2am where they lived, jumped up from 50 mph to 110 mph winds (stayed that way 100+ around 30 mins) , the noise outside was so loud i cant even describe it , never seen power in mother nature like that up close i will never forget it.

Having lived most of my 72 years in Arkansas and S.W. Missouri, I have often seen cloud to ground lightening that is bright, fluorescent pink. And those winds! Not often but a handful of times in those years we have had those hellacious winds. It's not fun. Back when I was a kid and up until the tornado hit Joplin, we never had a safe room. We just got in the bathtub with pillows and quilts or up against an interior wall. I hope nobody was hurt badly from this storm on the video!

Went through one of these in a deep ditch as a kid, the funnel cloud was huge but didnt touch down. Scared us but even as an 8 year old, we KNEW what to do. We were out playing at our lake cabin in Texas and we watched it coming and found a good ditch. My MOM and sisters were screaming at us, out of Fear because they didnt know where we were. ALL children should be taught what to do in dangerous weather events. Saved our lives because we didnt run 300 yards back to the cabin. We got safe and rode it out

The red lightning was amazing! I've watched a video by Pecos Hank about red sprites--had never heard of them before. I do enjoy watching videos of thunderstorms, because here in coastal Northern California our storms are usually missing the thunder and lightning. Sometimes we get crazy heavy rain and big winds, but almost never the extra elements. I still remember the few vivid lightning storms we've had in my lifetime--one in the late 90s where my friends and I stood for a couple of hours in the Oakland hills watching with awe the show of lightning over San Francisco, and another time in Mendocino--on July 4th, I recall--where my husband and I sat at a darkened window for hours watching the lightning flashes out at sea. A couple of years ago we had a gorgeous dry lightning storm which sadly caused some devastating forest fires. But it wasn't always such a rare occurrence. When I was a child, growing up in Berkeley, thunder and lightning were frequent. My Dad used to joke that thunder was just God moving furniture around up in heaven. We still get as much (sometimes more) rain as we did then--drought periods notwithstanding. But the thunder and lightning are mostly gone. I miss them. The biggest storm I've ever experienced in northern California was in January of 2002. It was the remnant of a huge Pacific hurricane, or typhoon, which managed to make it all the way up the coast to us--a rare occurrence indeed. THAT was a storm! We actually had a lot of thunder and lightning, and the rain and wind were almost midwestern-tier, with gusts up to 75-80 mph. We had a huge tree by our house, a 100 year old black walnut, and we were really afraid it would come down on us. Thankfully it did not. But I"ll never forget the incredible noise of the wind and the thrashing tree, the heavy sheets of rain and hail smashing against our windows. Our neighbor kept his collection of old cars in the lot next door, and several had big, heavy old carports over them--semi-permanent structures made of metal, anchored with huge concrete blocks. Two of them actually went aloft and crashed into our fence, knocking it over. That, and all the toppled trees around town, made that storm the most impressive and memorable of my lifetime.

I have actually. The year was 2013 and I was in Northwest IN. Coming home from drive inn w my girlfriend ‘at the time’ and was looking in my rear view mirror. Huge long red bolts of lightning highlighting how big the storm was. Wow. It only lightly rained where I was but East mid state really got a big storm ….love to watch storms. Always have. Always will ….cool video by the way😉👍🏻

Aussie here. Experience in this country is when there is a lot of reddish/rustic lightning ahead of the main storm it is due to a lot of dust being carried in the atmosphere of the storm front. The lightning flash gets filtered through this reddish or rustic hue. I note others have mentioned tree branches or transformers exploding, and that may also be the case. If you don't get much rain in this type of storm, or miss the main downpour, everything gets coated in rain that has collected this fine dust and turns it into a light mud. Your vehicles look filthy as do your house windows. Any laundry left out needs to be rewashed.

Last week I was driving through western Kansas on my way to Colorado and got caught at about 3 AM by one of these types of storms rapidly approaching, so I had to take a detour down a road in the literal middle of nowhere where I did not see any other form of life while driving. Needless to say, it’s pretty eerie to be running from a storm like this early in the morning with no one around to help you if something really bad happens.

You did a great job staying calm and documenting the storm. Thanks for sharing.

I live in Illinois, and we do get storms like this. I do remember some storms when I was growing up in the past. When I was living on Clark St. in Rantoul, IL we had a storm like this, caused a lot of storm damage, that was like in the early 2000's when I had seen that storm. I remember the April 27th, 2011 storm, it was one the most powerful storms that I ever seen, some counties in Illinois was under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch and a Tornado Watch as well. The storm arrived in the evening of almost 7:00 P.M. lots of lightning and Tornado Sirens was sounded in Rantoul, IL, because the they're was a rotation near the Rantoul area. I saw a green lightning flash through the door window, I've never seen that color of lightning in my life. That was during the Tornado Outbreak that was going on down in the southern states at the time. And the recent storm I remember was June, 29th 2023, one of the storms that I ever seen since the April of 27th, 2011. It was so powerful that it caused a lots of power outages in several locations in Illinois that was in the path of the storm, the storm was moving at 80 MPH, that's the highest speed of a storm that I ever seen in my life. Lots of lightning, damaging winds, some hail, but a thick sheet of rain. The power was out since the storm came in, until the late night hours of the A.M. like almost 1:00 A.M. The storm caused over $800,000 in damages.

I saw this here in NW Arkansas about 2 weeks ago. I'm 40 years old and lived here my entire life and have never seen this before. I was up on the roof at work and saw a bright red flash and thought it had blown up a transformer or something but never heard the explosion. It lit up the whole sky to the south of me. I thought I was nuts, thanks for posting this.

Crazy storm, right? I would have been scared to be in it. Always a tragedy to lose the trees...hope no one was injured. Thanks for sharing. 😉👍❤

That's AWESOME! Like War of the Worlds. I had to cast this to my tv and surround sound.

Can't say I've witnessed a storm like that, but up here in Canada, we sometimes have winter storms with heavy snowfall, lightning and thunder. A couple times the electrical was frozen, and with the weight of the ice and added wind, the wires snap under pressure. It's happened enough times that they started moving the electrical underground.

Back in the 70s we were on a road trip and spent a few days in Colorado Springs, CO. The first night there was a huge storm with hail and blue, green, red, and yellow lightening. Never saw anything like it before or since. It was amazing to watch. Thankfully there was no hail damage or super high winds, but it is a storm we will never forget!

the part when it goes silent and then the sirens start is chilling, sent shivers to my body

Hi Nick.ive lived through this once. Let's just say I'm glad to be here

I used to be a lineman. Seen this stuff a lot

That’s definitely The Upside Down

You are incredibly brave for sticking it out to get that incredible footage - especially seeing the aftermath. I salute you!

I live outside of Mannford, this was absolutely terrifying. One of my sheds blew completely away and my neighbors 10x12 building rolled across his property with all his saddles and horse gear inside. We pushed it back on its floor with a tractor and it was actually okay. My 10x12 building which has my motorcycle in it was just fine thankfully but we had a lot of downed trees. A house down the road had a tree fall on it killing a man with his son trapped in the same bed next to him😢. Idk if any tornadoes were confirmed but it sure seemed like one was in the area

I saw this a few times in Indiana growing up but I have lived on the coast of MS since early 2000's and went through Katrina and several other hurricanes, so yes I have seen it. Nature is amazing! Thank you for this wonderful video!

For anyone who's been through these situations .. it's kinda trauma-inducing to relive even vicariously on video. It's important for those who haven't to know that sometimes it gets even worse and just goes on for hours & hours too. Truly the stuff of nightmares as some watch surrounding homes get battered and broken or as their own get violated by the fury of nature.

This was a crazy storm. My wife and I are new to Oklahoma/Tulsa and we have been here for a year; while I knew storms can get crazy, I didn't expect sirens to go off for 30min straight. My roomies were downstairs freaking out. I kinda sat in the laundry room looking out the kitchen window just watching the crazy colors.

Wow! I've been looking for videos of the Tulsa storm. My Van Halen tribute band was playing in Tulsa that night. We had just loaded up the tour bus and was about to pull out of the venue when the storm hit us. Me and the bus driver were looking outside the window and seeing stuff flying about two or three blocks away. I told everyone that we have to get inside ASAP. There was a garage door that was breathing and it felt like the whole ceiling was breathing. Pretty scary storm. My lead singer was at the back of the bus.... He didn't make it out on time and had to ride it out in the bus. Luckily he was okay but water was leaking inside because the storm blew off some of our vent covers. So glad somebody got a video of this

Been through two of those one in the 80’s and one in the early 2000’s. Both were terrifying. I lived by a lake and had minnows in my yard with trees down. One storm nocked down entire forest for miles and miles.

This was basically a miniature inland hurricane. There were even a few tornadoes embedded in this storm. As others have mentioned, that multicolored "lightning" was in fact power flashes from electrical transformers shorting out.

The only time I've ever seen red lightning was when lightning struck an oil tank at a refinery and blew it up. Considering the winds, what you saw might have been something similar or related to power lines getting wrecked. Looks like there were probably lots of power flashes with that too. Still a wicked storm. Thanks for sharing the experience.

Was in a category 4 tornado in Shoreview MN, in 1996, the sky turned green/grey, the air pressure popped your ears and the triple pane storm and efficiency windows of my office bldg/campus just went “pop” and cracked…. My 1996 Toyota 4 Runner SUV was spun around 180degrees, every piece of glass was shattered including my sunroof, headlights and dash… the entire vehicle body was just thousands of hail dents and the interior was just soaked…. They totaled out the vehicle - meanwhile, my brand new, newly built home, located 4 miles away in Lino Lakes MN, had its vinyl siding destroyed on 2 sides of the house… it was surreal…

Those are actually powerlines arcing and transformers blowing from the wind. Sprites are impossible to see under the storm because theyre tens of miles overhead. Powerflashes are one of those precursors where you know you’re in real trouble. Scary footage for sure!

Great video! I had a seasonal camper on a lake in the Northeast and we had some t-storms with straight line winds. Took down trees in the campground and across the lake. Another time we had hurricane Irma come through in Florida. Snapped power poles took down trees, transformers blowing up everywhere. Lost power for 8 days. Weather is wild!

I just went through a nasty storm 1 hour ago. There's nothing quite as spooky to me than when that tornado siren goes off and you live in a mobile home. It scares the bejeebers out of me every time.🔊 🌬🌪 Everybody safe in our community🙏Thanks

Awesome capture!! Thank you for sharing, and glad you are safe.

An incredible case study on the value of burying the power lines.

I'd of loved to see that!! The best storm I've seen here in the UK was amazing!! The clouds where huge mushrooms and pretty low and when the lightning flashed they were lit up purple and orange! You could see them very briefly cascade into the sky, it was truly powerful and immensely impressive! That was 12 years ago now I still remember that.

Hey, awesome footage, but sorry that you had all of that destruction! I've experienced two derechos and plenty of windstorms, and the amount of damage that those powerful straight-line winds can do is unbelievable, especially to the power transformers and trees. It looks like a war zone afterwards. Please stay safe, and thanks for the footage.

Everytime a storm hits us in the camper it really connects me to my ancestors who feared God daily. Nothing scarier than a storm in a camper.

Props to the man standing outside and recording!

I’ve driven through a storm like that with 80 mph winds. It was blowing me off the road, nothing I could do. I wasn’t going to be picked up sitting still, so I just kept driving and got really lucky. I’ve also been asleep in my bed, inside a room, and saw lightning through my eye lids with my eyes closed. It was crazy. It was so close and the loudest bang I have ever heard in my life. When people say you can see an atomic bomb with your eyes closed, I can totally see why.

Looked like the scenes from War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise edition) with all the flashing lights. Very cool!

I live in WA state and several years ago we had a thunderstorm that gave us something like 2,200 lighting strikes in a 3 hour period. Really cool to watch.

WOW! I have seen pinkish lightening on occasion! Seeing Sprites in a storm is pretty rare!

Wow that sucks. Pray everyone is ok.

As someone who lives in area where tornados are very rare, this was amazing!

yeah, commercial driver here. You can see some really weird weather phenomenon at night when the daylight isn't there to wash it out.

What a fun storm. Thanks for the front-row seat.

I live 30 minutes west of Tulsa. Couldn't believe how strong it got by the time it got to Tulsa. When it hit us out here, the winds were around 70 mph, or there are so many trees that we were luckily buffered from the wind. In either case, the amount of damage in town is way more than I expected. I feel for y'all still without power from this.

What a storm. Thanks for filming it.

Dearborn Heights, MI around 1980 or so. Flattened so many huge trees. The area looked drastically different after the cleanup.

I have never seen so many transformers explode in one storm!! Good lord. That storm was on a mission to take out the power to everything and everyone in its sight.

Yes, all spectrums of colors of a rainbow in streaks and bolts of lightening danced through the dark midnight to morning sky during hurricane (Alecia, 1983). Hours before the eye passed over Fry Rd in Katy, Tx, we experienced 93 mph sustained winds. More than once throughout the years while traveling from Texas to New Mexico during the month of July -- right through tornado alley, witnessed streaks of pink and streaks orange lightning. The colors are mesmerizing and frightening all at same time.

Awesome!!! Thanks for sharing! I love a good storm!!

Way back in Oct 12, 1962, the Seattle area experienced it's only sustained, "Cat 2" windstorm, with winds sustained at 60-+ mph, and gusts well into the 80s...outlying suburbs registered 100mph gusts. I was caught in the middle of this, trying, and then giving up, to deliver my daily newspaper route!..The storm is legendary in the Pacific NW...we NEVER get these kind of super-intense storms, although we occasionally get more brief storms, that blow themselves out after a couple of hours. The 1962 storm lasted over four hours!...I am now 76yo, and oddly enough, feel privileged to have experienced such a random force of Nature. When I mention it to younger folks, they think I am exaggerating. But film exists that documents the damage. The 62 storm actually made landfall in N california, and the eye of the storm marched up the coast, doing most damage to the state of Oregon--where winds hit 130 mph!...It actually was losing some strength when it hit the Western Washington area. I will never forget that day!

I went through a storm like this in New Mexico. The lightning was lighting up the whole sky this blood red color. It was wild.

It is so hard to find a good, violent, terrifying storm vid like this. By far the best one I’ve ever seen, ⭐️Favorite

I have now. That was definitely 100+ winds, no doubt. Thanks for sharing!

I was on my porch on Father’s Day in Oklahoma as well. It got crazy and the funny thing about it is there wasn’t much wind on the porch but the trees and everything around me got devastated. I hope you have recovered.

Great video. I've been near some lightning strikes that have done some damage, but where I live, I'm extremely glad that we do not get storms as violent as this. Our worst was in1987- I was on night shift at the power plant, and my wife and son were at home with trees in our gardens crashing down both sides of our house, luckily missing it. The roads were blocked so I could not get home and the relief shifts could not reach us.

Wow, and the tornado siren, too. I actually LOVE this kind of weather. I hope everyone was ok after it passed.

Amazing!!!! I felt like I was right there!!! Awesome footage!!

Love myself a good thunderstorm. Footage was great. Beautiful and frightening at the same time. Hope everyone is ok.

Hey! I have insight on this, those colorful flashes are actually called power flashes, and as the name says they are flashes of light coming from high voltage power lines, and they are quite pretty. That 100mph windstorm was actually in Tulsa a few days ago, and I’d know this as I was watching it on radar! The NWS actually issued a warning and it was treated as a tornado warning, in the future please take shelter! Great content can’t come from dead creators!

Wicked storm. Wow. Thanks for sharing. Not seen red lighting but have seen purple. Also a very wicked storm.

Very nice video to watch

We had a Major heavy Ice storm hit my house many years ago. The weird part was not the heavy damaging ice but after the storm ended it started too get really really Foggy at some point. Because of the heavy ice When the transformers from all around my neighborhood and distant one's started to let go it turned the Fog all different colors. The fog Was very very thick also taking 50 75 yds visibilty. Me and my parents stood on our porch hearing the pop and hum and watching Green white Blue orange Red purple Colors. Was like being inside a colored Marsh mellow . It was the coolest thing I had ever seen

We had this happen a few years back here in Northern Michigan, it was pretty wild, and the aftermath looked exactly like that of your video.

Like it when the sirens come on, you know it will be intense

Because of this video, I’ve still never seen red lightning

Last year in England we had a storm that lasted four hours straight and during that time there was constant thunder. I mean literally constant, like a massive engine in the sky, sometimes so loud you could see the reflections bug out in the windows as the glass bulged with the air pressure change. There was lightning every two to three seconds, without pause for those four hours. Some of the flashes were bright purple, some blue, and to the south they looked orange. It didn't rain much, no more than half an inch, but I've never seen or heard anything like that before.

I was in a loading dock for this. It was pretty awesome. No one was hurt but, the trees really suffered.