It's weird, I did not even realize there was different types of lightning. I have only ever seen cloud to ground lighting myself. So it's really cool to learn that mother nature can produce more than one kind!
NO LO PUEDE CREER😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Mostly lighting is scary for some peeps but me I’m calm because it strikes our house all the time my bother gets scared but my sis and I keep him calm. Me during a storm 😊 my sister during a storm 🎧😎 my bother during a storm ☹️
Clash Master I asked my mosque teacher he said on days Allah talks with his angels shaytan tries to listen to the conversation but there are some other angels guarding and when they find or see shaytan they throw lighting at shaytan
Hank, ball lightning tortured me when I was 3 and 4. My parents live in a very old house and it had a tree scraping the wire that connected the house to the power lines. There were many huge storms in the summer and one night something glowing was rolling around the metal frame on my canopy bed. I was terrified. Then one night I was in the bath and one of those ball things came out of the bathroom light fixture and went into the hallway phone, killing it. My dad saw it too. I think a few more floated around my room and I ran screaming into my parents room. Eventually they cut the tree and it stopped. I had nightmares about the things attacking me for like a year.
My great grandparents, grandparents, my mom, and aunt witnessed ball lighting "float" as you said right through their house. My great grandmother had a small cottage and all were staying there for the summer. One extremely hot summer day, a thunderstorm came in off the water as they usually did and while all were sitting in the living room, one of those ball things went in the front door and out the back. This wasn't a one person saw it because everyone recounted the same story with absolute consistency right up until they all passed away including my mom who passed in 2018. For years afterwards, my great grandmother would lock the doors, pull the shades, and sit in a corner in the dark and wait out a storm as it passed by.
I have nightmares about that a 1 meter sized ball lightning will come into my house and push me into a corner... And then I wake up at 1am and don't get enough sleep.
(Side note) One time my school got hit by a lightning strike and all power went out for like 5-10 seconds. There wasn't ball lightning but everyone freaked out except me and the teacher.
@@jeffreym4370 lmao! I had never watched Star War's single episode. But still, I feel Aliens exist. Though it's just a belief , like many feel people travel Heaven or Hell after Death. That's just a natural belief. Although I didn't connect the situation with this video. It was just a joke actually. 😁
I believe I saw ball lightning once (Quite a while after I saw this video too). I went for a walk right before this massive storm entered my town, I was constantly looking up at the clouds to see if the lightning was getting closer, which it was, so I kept a reasonable pace (basically jogging). I quickly looked up to check the sky, when I noticed a small glowing ball drop straight out of the clouds, and hit the ground a block away from me. It didn’t make a sound when it hit. At that point I thought ‘screw this!’ And I sprinted home. It’s safe to say I always check the weather radar if I think a storm is around now. (P.s. This was in Aus)
@@NevTheDeranged well I didn’t see any lightning or birds in the area before the ball appeared. Although the ‘ball’ did fall out of the clouds, so it might be a possibility that something like that occurred in the clouds. (I will also note, I didn’t hear any thunder directly afterwards either).
Speaking of Ball lightning that you mention at the end, I have witnessed it once. I was pretty young, but i remember a powerful electrical storm passing through the area, and being a young kid, it was a little scary. It was night and I was supposed to be in bed, but couldn't sleep, so i was peeking out my window, and saw the glowing orb just floating slowly in the air until it made contact with a telephone pole in the corner of the backyard, and released a bright flash, the loudest crack of thunder Ive ever heard. And of course it knocked out the transformer on the pole and killed power to that little part of our neighborhood. Was in Spokane, WA. in the mid 80's.
A lot of people have seen ball lighting, but it's still extremely rare. I knew a retired airlines pilot who said that it formed on the nose of the airplane and slowly move down the inside all the way to the back. It's probably come complicated form of static electricity.
In high school my friend and I would chase storms up in Montana. One of the greatest things we ever saw was gigantic symmetrical lightning. Like a Rorschach test kind of thing. It wasn’t just once either but many strikes that had a mirror image in that storm. It was so intense and beautiful, I will never forget it. I’ve tried looking it up multiple times over the years and have never been able to find anything about it. Just a once in a lifetime kind of thing, I guess. Has anyone else experienced this?
I had a weird experience with ball lightning in the 1970s. I was at the dining room table at 2AM doing homework. All of a sudden, a intensely bright glowing ball about the size of a soccer ball floated about 6" above the floor in the kitchen. It made a quiet sizzling sound. I stared at it. I had read about ball lightning, but all I could do when I actually saw it was stare with my mind a complete blank. It exploded with a deafening booming pop, like a transformer box exploding. The whole experience was only a second or two. No property damage. My sister, who had been sleeping, ran downstairs thinking something had exploded. When I told her what I had seen, she was pissed that she had missed it. Every other person who describes their experience with ball lightning sounds very similar to mine.
When I was like 8, I was looking outside during a storm and saw ball lightning. I haven’t seen it since, and I’ve lived in the really intense stuff in north Texas. So I can say that it is real. Just EXTREMELY rare
I think Ive seen it once, it was pretty eerie. I was looking out the window at night, and this blue ball of flickering light passed by. I assumed it was ball lightning, what else could it possibly have been?
When I was a kid, I was coming home with my Dad, and his friend. We were miles from town, but we saw the lightning hit the ground. We thought it hit our TV antenna, but it hit the neighbor's tree, splitting it in half. Almost 40 years later, I can still see that bolt!
I absolutely love this channel. I did a report on tornados when I was in the 7th grade. I’m now 68 so that was almost before electricity was discovered. Haha. Your variety of information, calm demeanor and wicked sense of humor is unmatched by any other doing this type of work. I watched others but often interpersonal strife was too distracting. (TIV) And another was pretty good but I couldn’t take the screaming’Back Up’ when the driver was doing that already. (Dominator) I know I didn’t give enough clues for identifying some of those others but I’m just mean like that. 🤣😇 Please keep up your terrific work. You are very much appreciated!!
I saw ball lightning for the first time last year. I was filming a thunderstorm and it looked like the best of it was over, so of course I stopped the camera. No more than five minutes later, my brother and I watched as a bright ball--maybe the size of a beach ball or as small as a baseball--floated nearby. It was hard to tell size and distance because it was so bright. I was sort of paralyzed, awestruck. The thing blew up just like lightning after maybe ten or fifteen seconds existing as an orb. I'm absolutely pissed that I stopped the camera--the ball would have been visible right in its path. Ugh. That wasn't the only missed opportunity. I also missed lightning striking a barn and setting it on fire. Really, I've learned my lesson. Don't stop recording until the sky is blue. Excellent video as always, Hank. My favorite storm chaser/snake handler.
+Pecos Hank I've scoured a variety of sources and the only credible footage I have ever found of ball lighting is described here. At one point I found the original paper but have since lost the link. This the best I can find currently. medium.com/looking-up/ball-lightning-b594b6ffea37#.bj476lkr6 It was incidentally captured by a lightning research team that was studying normal lightning.
3:29 this is a cool technique to get those. I guess that they'll look better if the motion is done automatically with some motor to have a smooth uniform turn.
Your weather videos should be used for elementary school science classes. You are a great teacher. I think kids would really enjoy and thereby learn well from your content.
Hank I saw ball lightning a few weeks ago and it was like a vision from God. I could not believe my eyes! It definitely exists!! I just wish I had my camera!! ( Also saw some Red Sprites last year, which felt super alien)
Thank you for describing "chain" lightning.😀 I only ever saw it once, many years ago, and I didn't know the name for it. A strangely slow moving lightning bolt struck the ground less than a mile away and seemed to break up into a necklace of glowing spheres which then faded out quickly but individually. The last few seemed to be drifting with the wind. The accompanying thunderclap rattled the house windows behind me. It was just so beautiful and awesome. (I'm not a storm chaser, but I really enjoy watching them.)
I was at Bear Lake (Utah/Idaho) During a major thunderstorm. I was camping and had been hearing the lightning all day, but assumed it was moving away from us. When we got to the lake, I noticed there was a thunderstorm in Montpelier Idaho (13 miles from the lake) but didn't think much of it. The wind that day was incredible, the waves were about 5 ft tall at times. Eventually we decided we were done swimming and decided to head back to camp. As were leaving a couple high schoolers came and asked us for help since there car had died; and wanted us to jump it. We agreed and drove over to their car. As my friend is helping them jump it, I noticed it had started to lightly rain, and within mere seconds it was a complete downpour. My friend managed to jump their car (They were driving a sedan, we were driving an SUV), and got back in the car and was dripping wet. The rain was so heavy we feared it was going to break our window (These weren't small drops of rain, rather huge pieces that were painful when they hit you). We started driving away, with the sedan behind us; we were about to leave the beach when I noticed they got stuck in the sand and we had to drive back and help them once-again. They managed to get off the beach and drove away. We parked on the side of the road since visibility was near 0. I looked back at the beach and there was massive RV's stuck in the sand, and jet skis that had been abandoned being thrown around in the water. We were parked next to a bunch of powerlines, and I noticed blue plasma running up and down them, and a transformer which we had previously not noticed exploded just behind us. Everyone screamed bloody murder as we sped away. We got back to camp, being traumatized from the storm decided to leave early (We were only going to stay one more day anyway). That storm was the craziest weather I had ever been in, and we still joke about it saying: "Were never going back there again or Zeus is going to punish us!"
About a month ago, Los Angeles, the city I live in, experienced a rare severe thunderstorm with an epic lightning show. There was constant cloud to ground lightning with two or three anvil crawlers. The storm caught several people off guard with a sudden burst of heavy rain and pea sized hail.
depressed thoughts I doubt God gave you that sign being that it represents 666. That is why Hollywood and the music industry makes that all the time. Just sayin. I’m sure you didn’t know though.
I remember somewhere on TV (it was either Discovery or National Geographic, anyway something rather legit) they were doing an experiment to actually create ball lightning, and they kinda managed to do it - the discharge was little electric balls that rolled around the tray for a fraction of a second. So I think it is possible, it's just so rare that you can't really prepare yourself to photograph it.
Hank, you have to be one of the "coolest" people on youtube. The Patterson film shot was just too funny! If you really are in Pecos, I would like to "do lunch" with you the next time I breeze through there.
Howdy Ed. I earned the nickname "Pecos" because of my affiliation with tornadoes and rattlesnakes. Remember, Pecos Bill lassoed at tornado with a rattlesnake... And second my spending Summers in the Pecos River valley. I do pass through the town from time to time but nobody recognizes me. Happy Trails friend.
Pecos Hank lol I have been wondering how u got the name...snake/storm chaser that my friend is something you don't hear of often. love your vids and the way you explain the content.keep doin what u do the way u do
My grandmother told me that back in the 70's lightning hit her TV (prolly through the wires) in her house and a ball of "lightning" (plasma probably) came out of the TV and floated through the living room a bit and then dissipated. She says it was the scariest thing she'd ever experienced.
i saw ball lightning one time when i was younger. i was staying at my grandparents' house in pennsylvania and we were watching tv in the living room during a storm. we heard the loudest sound i've ever heard and jumped up to look out the window. a ball of what looked like the sun was rolling down the metal handrail on the stairs outside. it was loud and bright and quite terrifying. you could feel the static in the air for a few moments before it dissipated. it was absolutely insane, and i don't think i'll ever experience something like it again.
Because you didn't catch it on film, no one will ever believe you. But, I do. My father, now dead, saw it once, as a child. My father was a very devout Christian. He was also a wonderful story teller, part of the oral tradition of the poor folk of the depression. He would regal us with stories of the people and times of his youth spent struggling to survive during the great depression. He said, once when he was very young and his parents were share croppers, a very bad storm came through their settlement. They had no electricity, so, after night fell, the entire country side was dark except for the lightning strikes. The family had gotten up and gone to the windows as the storm was so intense. One of the strikes was right at a fence line close to the house. After the initial strike, the whole family watched in amazement as a large ball of light then traveled down the length of the barbed wire until it reached a corner post then disappeared. He was about 6 or 7. Until he died, at 87, he never forgot the sight, nor did his siblings. Nor did any of them ever see it repeated. His family numbered 11 at the time and all the kids his age and up told the exact same thing. The two younger ones didn't remember the incident as one was only 4 and the other a toddler. I believe you.
@@cwavt8849 that is a great story! "Ball lightning" has been baffling scientists for hundreds of years; it isn't that scientists believe that "ball lightning" doesn't exist, instead, the problem with ball lightning comes down to the old scientific adage "if you can't measure it, you don't know what it is".
My own family has a similar story. During the 1940s my mother's family had a farm in Washington state. Lightening struck an outdoor pipe that then apparently followed the course of the plumbing into the kitchen where my grandmother, mother and aunt were all working. A ball of lightening popped out of the faucet, bounced around the sink and then out into the middle of the kitchen and vanished. I asked my family members about this many times over the years and I am convinced that they saw what appeared to be ball lightening.
Earth: **does little lightning firecrackers** Saturn: "Hold my beer." But seriously... A very interesting video, and one hell of a collection of footage and stills. (Plus, that trick for catching the different flickers is a stroke of genius.) Don't forget those frightening "positive-charge" bolts, either - especially since they can create "sprites" in the upper-atmosphere. Though fat lot of good it does those of us who are on the ground and under said storms...
A few years ago I was flying from Houston to Oklahoma City. We had to fly around a large storm system that put on quite a lightning show. A we descended on our approach to the airport I was watching several spectacular lightning strikes around a small town. One large strike produced what looked like a “smoke ring” of lightning that appeared to rise up from the point of the lightning strike. It was brief and looked like an effect I’ve seen in film of Van deGraf (?) generators of a donut shaped discharge. I have never seen anything like it before or since.
1:13 Hank: During a lightning storm you don't wanna be the tallest thing standing around. Me: MAH SHORT ASS SELF IS SAFE-- Hank: But that doesn't mean your safe if your the shortest Me: *FUUUUUUUU--*
The strangest lightning I've seen was actually in western NY. We were in the hills and a microburst took out our tent, luckily my fam also had a camper nearby. We decided to sit in the car and watch the show. We pulled up to a spot where we could see out over a few hilltops. The magic moment was when about 5 bolts crawled across the cloud base towards eachother. They joined together and formed a huge blue-white bolt that hit the hilltop directly across from us! It was blinding and the crack made our hair stand on end. I was surprised we didn't see something catch fire! We went back in the morning to see if we could spot where it hit but sadly saw nothing. Never have I seen one like it before or since!
Have you ever considered compiling an album of the music you use in your videos? Aside from the beautiful pictures, I really enjoy that music. Thanks. :-)
Hey Elaine. Actually i have :D Got a couple new symphonic pieces rattling around in my head that i hope to record... Maybe release those with the others. Thanks!
I have seen ball lightning. It was around 1.5 metres across, and so bright we could not look at it without squinting and covering our eyes. I was driving down the side of a shallow and narrow valley, on the right hand wall of the valley, about half way up the slope. The road was flat and level. We were returning from a day of skiing. It was dusky and starting to get dark at the time. The ball appeared from nowhere roughly in the middle of the valley about 50 metres ahead of the old '72 Landcruiser and maybe 70 metres left and at roughly the same altitude. It was moving away from us slowly but in the same direction, and so I chased it. I estimate it was doing around 70mph up the valley. It held a straight path and altitude from our perspective, and it lasted about 15 seconds, although it felt longer. When it ended, it simply winked out of existence, just like a normal lightning bolt, leaving us four guys with some heavy streaks in our vision. One of the guys thought it was an alien craft/UFO, but I was quick to disabuse him of that notion. It was a pretty freaky experience though, and I'll never forget it. Two Thumbs up - Would experience again! Edit: All four of us discussed our shared experience extensively on the hour-long trip home, and we all agreed that we saw the same thing, as we described it to each other repeatedly. This was in about 1985 or so. Long before cameras became ubiquitous. It looked blue white. Similar in colour to an arc welding plasma but it was steadier in brightness.
i actually have seen ball lightning before, i was in the Dominican republic and a massive storm came over us, and i saw a ball of light hit the lake in front of us. i thought i made it up but now hearing that you have mentioned this its confirmed to me that i did see what i thought i saw.
I've never witnessed it myself, but my mom swears she has seen ball lightning once. She said she was sitting on the couch in the living room of a house when she was a lot younger. The living room and dining room were basically one big room. The dining room had a patio sliding door. She said she watched what looked like a ball of light come through the patio door, across the dining room, and go into the kitchen which was out of her sight. She said it crackled too.
Amazing and informative video! Really great footage - here in Perth we don't tend to get truly massive storms, and practically never get tornadoes. I've never seen upward lighting before.
Before I never knew anything about lightning but after watching this video I learned so much from it! I didn’t even know what chain lightning was until I saw this! It’s still good to rewatch this memory of a video
As always, Hank, your photography and videography are excellent! The Slo-Mo Guys have a video where they try to image lightning. If I can find it, I'll drop a link.
i visited the house of someone who had a close-up and personal experience with ball lightning. She narrated it's formation,coming into her house off a metal-framed window, "rolling"off the sash and then rolled along the floor for quite a few feet leaving a scorched melted carpet trail. It then jumped towards an electric outlet and disappeared. The burn scars were certainly consistent with her account, and she was visibly shaken by the incident.
Lightning is beautiful. When I was a kid I was SO scared, but now as an adult I could watch it out the window for hours and hours, I absolutely love it. Just don't stand under a tree in lightning (if outside), find open areas away from buildings; trees; poles etc; then crouch down with your rubber shoes only contacting the earth. Therefore SAFE ;)
HEY! That's my selfie! So sounds like ball lightning is right there with cow tipping. Everybody swears they've seen it, but there's no real evidence it's a thing. Great tip on the swinging back-and-forth to catch the ribbon lighting. I'd love to talk shop on your storm photography techniques. I tried some thunderstorm timelapses in the Amazon and they just didn't really come out. Not enough practice time here in S. Cal.
+Jonathan Stewart i have video evidence that cow tipping is indeed a thing.....not surprisingly, its my most viewed video out of over 1000 vids. just type in cow tipping in your youtube search bar and my video will be about the 4th one or so on the list
