Red lighting bolt

I just finished making a post here at ATS when I decided to turn in my seat and look out my window. My window faces South toward Delaware and the sky looked sort of strange to me. It appeared to have a brightness in one area then all of a sudden I saw a "pure red lightning bolt." After that I ran to get the camera (my grandson had it downstairs) when I got back the brightness was dimming and there appeared to be some regular heat lightning.

It is not raining and there is no thunder right now, so I have a question. has anyone every seen a bright red lightning bolt before? It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen, I'm glad I just happened to turn at the right time. The time was 10:40 pm

I live in the UK, and during the horrendous weather we've been having recently there have been one or two thunder storms. During a particularly nasty one last week the whole area was alive with lightening. While I only saw a couple of flashes directly (I was down below with the dog in my cabin) these were red. Not a particularly strong, deep red. More like neon red. Its a first for me.

shucks! I never get to see anything freaky or abnormal...Sigh! Did it look anything like these??


Googled red lightning.

Often times lightning will appear red during a sunset. Also in the distance it could get redshifted much like the moon does when it's low on the horizon.

This link has a few shots (esp. halfway down) where the lightning appears red.

Did you see any other lightning bolts that were not red? Were they all red?

Excellent site, Kruel. There is one shot on the first page that is exactly the colour I saw. The time was right for the sun to be setting, too, around 10pm, but there was no way I could see it setting. The storm was huge.

We had a bolt of Pink lightening a few weeks ago. Someone told us it was called purple lightenng caused by being really hot. I didn't see it, my friend did while I was on the phone with her, so I wouldn't know which pics to compare to. I asked if it was purplish pink, but she said it was bright pink. By the time i went to look, it was just normal lightening.

It was almost 10:45 at night, all I can say is when I turned and looked South the sky in one area had a weird white kind of glow to it. The lightning bolt was not extra long it was one straight bolt and it didn't go low to the ground like they do. It seemed after that the white glow started to dim and the sky looked normal.

I would say in about 15 minutes or so I started to see some heat lightning then we got some rain for a few minutes , no thunder.

I was surprised because I have never seen red lightning... never knew there was such a thing. It seemed funny that it would only happen one time. I watched the sky and my oldest grandson came up to look to for awhile with me but nothing.

All I can say is weird stuff is happening

[edit on 6-7-2007 by observe50]

I've seen purple/pink lightning quite a few times here in Sydney recently -- I took these pics from the balcony of my apartment in 2005, it was one of the first times I can remember seeing strangely coloured lightning. (These are about 1MB each):

www.mooreimages.com.au...

www.mooreimages.com.au...

www.mooreimages.com.au...

...and we had one storm earlier this year that was the strangest I've probably ever seen; it was completely unpredictable. It took forever to arrive, there was little or no thunder as it approached, the main "light show" was preceded by a large gust of wind & then it was calm for the duration of the lightning. Bolts were striking in front of the apartment & behind, left & right simultaneously -- you couldn't judge the direction it was heading. Many of the bolts produced no thunder at all. At the time I thought that since there were so many strikes, maybe the sounds were cancelling each other out before it reached me (is that possible?) I think everything tall enough was struck at least once, including my building (now that I heard).

I liked your pictures, beautiful.

This was "one single bolt" none of the little off shoots you have on yours. It was in this glow cloud area not above it or below it and bright red.

The sky area dimmed after that then a bit later we started to get heat lightning (no thunder) and some rain for a short period.



[edit on 8-7-2007 by observe50]

Good Pictures!

We don't get many thunderstorms where I live.

Originally posted by Evasius
...and we had one storm earlier this year that was the strangest I've probably ever seen; it was completely unpredictable. It took forever to arrive, there was little or no thunder as it approached, the main "light show" was preceded by a large gust of wind & then it was calm for the duration of the lightning. Bolts were striking in front of the apartment & behind, left & right simultaneously -- you couldn't judge the direction it was heading. Many of the bolts produced no thunder at all. At the time I thought that since there were so many strikes, maybe the sounds were cancelling each other out before it reached me (is that possible?) I think everything tall enough was struck at least once, including my building (now that I heard).

What you just described there is almost identical to the scene in War of the worlds when the Aliens pop out the ground.

You didn't see any Tripod walkers vaporising people did you?

a red blast of electricty,
must be very impressive


I remember seeing a solar eclipse

the light changed to silver


beautifull


anyway, my question is this

if you know that you haven't seen all the forms a cloud can take

would you create a thread about a cloud shaped like a hoover?


I may be wrong but it feels like people will look out of their window, then a car will drive by and the after-image of the headlights will be/must be an alien/angel/ghost


this to the op
do you truly believe bit of lightening is mysterious, so mysterious you must tell this crew, dedicate a thread to it?

seems a bit futile to me


truly flabbergasted, I remain M

to the op again

I really don't mean to be rude,

so forgive me if it sounded that way.

but it just sounds as if to you anything must be special, extraordinary and therefore finally something the aliens did.

Sometimes lightning is red

sometimes it isn't

Much as we like to pretend, we don't have all the SFX that nature can throw at us categorized yet.


In a way I'm just curious why you want things to be mysterious.

just a thought

Once again I see members alike who feel compelled to attack the messager instead of commenting on the message.

I have never seen red lightning and before reading this post, researching their exsistance, had never heard of this phenomenom. Tell me if I had started this thread with excitement of something first seen before would you be attacking me as well??

I look forward to the day when I can witness such a event of roaring thunder and bolts of red lightning.

[edit on 8/7/07 by Rhain]

Johann Goldammer and, I believe, Colin Price, et al, have been studying the affects of pollution on global warming and natural disasters such as lightning.

Here is an article that briefly touches on it.

There was an article maybe a year ago posted to either nytimes or truthout that had something to do with how the amount of metal particles in the atmosphere caused by pollution and general industry has been increasing exponentially over the last few years and this in turn is making lightning more frequent, more severe, and more awesome.

Well, I think what surprised me was not only the fact that there was only ONE bolt but the one bolt was RED.

I have never heard of anyone ever make mention of one single red lighning bolt and I thought it was unusual and wanted to share. I have tried to look for something similiar on the net and have found nothing as what I saw.

Maybe this should be moved to an area that deals with Science maybe they may know what would cause just one red bolt no off shoots and not anywhere close to the ground.

I will say what I saw I do believe not many have seen and I really don't exactly how I feel about this.

reply to post by observe50


I know this is an old thread, but...

Today at around 3.30pm GMT my wife and son both saw a pink/red lightning bolt in west central Scotland, near Glasgow, in the UK.

I had never heard of this before, so did a quick search here, and as usual, ATS has seen it all before!!

The lightning was close by, (not red-shifted by distance viewing like sunset), and it also happened during a heavy snow shower! (Must have looked GREAT!!)

It was a single bolt or flash - like in the OP, and was followed very closely by a very loud clap of thunder which scared the beejeezeus out of my son!!

I'm not sure why it was red coloured, as it wasn't viewed from a distance, and didn't appear to have struck anything nearby? Any other possible causes of red lightning anyone??

GTD

look out my window.

At a angle you can get a mild prism effect through glass.
you can also get this through heavy rain or smoke

Both can make lighting look red.
www.layoutsparks.com...

Really strange lightning is rainbow lightning.
pictures.deadlycomputer.com...

reply to post by ANNED


WOW!
That rainbow lightning photo is awesome! (Although I do suspect a bit of creative photoshopping there!)

On the subject of today's red lightning though... It wasn't viewed through glass, and it wasn't raining unfortunately.

Many thanks for the reply - and nice photos though.

GTD