light flashes in the sky

Last year I was walking to the petrol station to buy some cigarettes, it was early in the morning, you know just before dawn when the sky is lightening up, well as I was walking I saw flashes in the sky, I mean the whole sky, I live in northern england, I was wondering has anyone else seen anything like this ??

I know exactly what you are talking about. I used to live in America and now I live in Tokyo, yet I have experienced this phenomenom in both locations. It seems that the atmospheric community refers to this as "lightning".

It does sound as though this could simply be lightning. There is one variety that can be seen without the accompanying sound of thunder . This site explains 'heat lightning'
www.islandnet.com...
which happens because a storm is too far away to be heard , but as the light travels further than sound, can still light up the sky, especially if it was still a little dark at that hour of the morning.
Do you think that this could be the explaination, or do you feel that there was more to what you saw than simple lightning?

[edit on 6-6-2005 by pantha]

thanks for replying but i cant write it of so simply as lightning, over here in england we have 24 hour news services and before I left to go to the petrol station I saw the weather report, on that day , THERE WHERE NO !!!!, cases of lightning any where in england or the surrounding area, so to write it of as light, I just cant buy it .

You may have to buy it. The funny thing about lightning reports is they can only tell you about lightning that happened before you went to the pet-rol station.

I love lighening. I'm from Oklahoma and we have a lot of tornadoes. On time when we were under a tornado warning I saw pink lightening. It was so pretty, but then i started haling so that wasn't good.

Last year I was walking to the petrol station to buy some cigarettes, it was early in the morning, you know just before dawn when the sky is lightening up, well as I was walking I saw flashes in the sky, I mean the whole sky, I live in northern England, I was wondering has anyone else seen anything like this ??

I live in the south in Berkshire and i've had the same thing happen to me walking to a friends house. It was a clear night from what i remember so i don’t know if it was lighting. It lit the whole sky up for a fraction of a second. I thought it was just me until i realised that everyone was standing around looking in to the sky wondering what had happened. First thing i thought was "Oh dear, i wonder if that was the flash you get when i nuke goes off?"

Don’t know if it means anything but it was right next to a large water tower that Vodafone use for it's masts. The things covered in them, you can here them making funky all most whale like noises at night, maybe that had something to do with it.

Any cell phone masts near your petrol station?

Let's slow it down and look for the simplest, most reasonable explanation. Pantha provided a good site for heat lightning. Why not check that out, learn some more about it if necessary, and then see if things start to fall in place.

It's actually much easier to approach an unexplained situation in such a way than it is to spend time brewing up other, much less likely scenarios.

Have to agree with the heat lightning assessment. Here in Florida, we get that alot...used to even be the lightning capital of the world (heck, even the name of our hockey team)

Within those remote thunderstorms, when the lightning bolts flash, their light can be seen as far as 160 kilometres (100 miles) distant, depending on the height of the bolt within the cloud, the clarity of the air between us and the bolt, and our elevation above the ground. Thunder, in comparison, has a much shorter range of detection — usually less than 25 km (15 miles) in a quiet rural setting and under 8 km (5 miles) in a noisy city environment.

Therefore, we see the lightning, but do not hear the thunder — a situation we have taken to call heat lightning.

thanks to everyone for putting your opinions to this strange event, I have just finished watching a program on a satalitte broadcast channel about superlighting, and how your discribing it, It could have been that, its just that seeing something like that so early in the morning, well I didn't know what it was, to the reply about a phone mast being close to the petrol station, the closest mast is on top of a hill about a mile a from the station, thanks guys and girls for helping me sort it out, with all the confussion about UFO's and things like that, well you cant tell whats natural phenomena and what experiments our gov's are doing and not telling us about, we only see the effects and wonder what the hells going on, once again thank you .

Should have been here yesterday....about an hour of heat lighting in the skies, and with some nice clouds. Quite beautiful really...

I remember one time, back in the late seventies or early eighties there was a storm that went through my area where there were lightening flashes several times a second!

There was no wind or rain or anything, just lots of lightening and thunder. Scared the willies out of me. Haven't seen anything like that before or since. I live in the Northeast, so it's pretty rare that I get to see storms that active.

[edit on 8-6-2005 by Junkheap]

[edit on 8-6-2005 by Junkheap]

out here in northwest texas; we get huge storms every summertime

we have had at least ten massive thunderstorms in the past 2 weeks
*in the region*
which have produced a handful of tornados

and we got some huge hail last week also; it got up to Softball sized in some parts
the street my friend lives on; half the people had their Car Windows broken out by the hail

its expensive to clean up afterwards
the people who sell car windows made a killing tho...

and on the subject of light flashing in the sky

i have a very good explanation
this is from my own expierance

one night when i was in 9th grade or so; 2 friends and i were sitting outside talking at like 3 or 4am in the morning

suddenly we saw a HUGE flash overwhelm the entire night sky
***it was a Clear night***

and we heard a huge POP too!

we looked up and the sky was still lit up by this thing
it had a smoke trail and a spot where it exploded

yup
a real meteorite fell from space and exploded high in the atmosphere above us

it caused massive bright light; smoke trail; and a loud "popping" sound

ive also seen a meteor during broad daylight come down from the sky and crash land a few dozen miles away

meteors can do some amazing things