Have You Ever Seen A Storm Like This?

orionthehunter
I haven't seen that from a distance. What I saw was worse. After 15 minutes of what could be best be described as wondering if a giant ship parked over your house and the Star Ship Enterprise had all lights shining constantly on your house, yard and neighborhood in super bright light, I felt a need to look past the glowing shade out the window. I saw super intense light everywhere, much brighter than daytime. Then I realized after a few seconds of trying to see inside the house with the lights on that I was blind. That was scary. After a few minutes my eye site came back much to my relief.

I saw flashes in the video. What I witnessed where I once lived was so constant that there were no visible flashes. It was identical to just having a super bright light on. I found out later we were at the center of a supercell with F5 tornadoes several mies away around the perimeter of the county. One of those tornadoes picked up box cars off a railroad track and they went airborne. A steel tower designed to survive 300 mph straight winds was twisted all around and the top got pushed into the ground. It was still all in one piece and still attached to the ground though. It just looked like a twisty like on a loaf of bread.

Crazy!...Thanks for sharing your experience OTH. I can't say that I've been totally blinded but I can say that I've had bolts of lightning burned into my retinas that took some time to dissipate.

I too have been in the middle of an out break with an F5 hitting my hometown. At the time I was in a trailer park at a lake and you could feel the trailer being lifted. I have total respect for mother nature and the fury she can reign down!

May I ask where you were living at the time?

We call it heat lightning here in Virginia. I watched a spectacular show last night.

Sitting on my front porch, watching the birds, the sky flashed white. As I looked up, I saw a bolt travelling horizontally overhead--creepy. Then I looked to the west, and realized that the sky had turned ominous with dark thunderclouds.

No sound, no rain. After that 1st flash, I listened for well over a minute, until I finally heard the barely audible rumble of thunder. That's when I moved inside.

The flashing of cloud-to-cloud lightning continued for at least 20 - 25 minutes, before the "normal" thunder & lightning moved closer. Then the rain drops started, followed by a downpour--an hour later it was over.

Heat, or sheet lightning, is strange. The flashing over my house last night seemed to average 4-5 per minute. Not continuous like the OP's video, but steady.

I have seen something similar to that, but not without thunder, that's pretty bizarre.

Saw non-stop lightning like that when I was a little kid, the electricity went out but no lights were needed because there was so little interval between flashes. The thunder was insane though, one non-stop roar.

There was an electrical storm in Wisconsin from south Madison to south of Janesville when I was in high school. Fires were being started by ground strikes everywhere...But there was accompanying thunder in that instance too.

Reminds me of the War of the Worlds movie, the new one with Tom Cruise, where the aliens were beaming down on bolts of lightning with no thunder.

The lightning with no thunder I find kind of creepy, and the fact it looks like an artillery barrage at night gives me the creeps too, but that's just my PTSD....

I have seen this twice in the last two months in the northeast US. Generally, what we refer to as "heat lightning" up hear, occurs on very hot and humid nights and produced a reddish flash when compared to lightning. Characteristically, it did not look anything like heat lightning to me, at least what I have seen of it many times in the past.

There was no thunder in either of the instances as well. It was completely silence and it occurred on two mild temperature nights, around the 50's and 60's. It was nonstop lightning and it continued on for at least 2-3 hours. Upon observation of radar, there were no storms over or near us at the time.

This year has been the first time I experienced something like this in the NE, thought I have seen in before in the midwest. However, that was amidst a lot of storms and thunder was present at the time.

The speed is real, and it sometimes occurs more frequently, almost nonstop in flashes.

Yes I've seen this a few times. It's perfectly normal.
It might be called flash lightning. I don't know.

The first time I saw it was 1981. The sky flashed for hours. I witnessed it again last week .

CIAGypsy
reply to post by AeonStorm

 

I've seen this kind of display many times. My mother also used to call it heat lightning. I was obsessed with watching storms as a kid... The beauty and power of them is almost without equal.

On a side note, I spent quite a bit of time doing scientific research which utilized a Solid State Tesla Coil SSTC-3.8 (40" arc). Lots of fun...

I meant to include this in my post yesterday but I couldn't do it through my mobile device...

reply to post by AeonStorm


Yes I have seen a storm just like the video in Florida. Quite amazing. The lighting was constant and went on and on like it would never stop. Oh, and it was not raining. Super cool stuff. Hope you get a chance to see it sometime.

I have seen something similar end of summer time. And I thought the exact same thing "War of the Worlds"

Now the other day I saw one roll in but I did not have my camera handy enough it was so fast and clouds were moving a great rate. By the time I got my camera a huge torrent of rain was falling and blocking the view of the clouds!

As my name says...I am a watcher of clouds. Always have been. I live in Ohio and have lived in Tennessee and Florida. I have seen lots of those kind of storms...complete silence, just beautiful lightning and depending on what region I was in depended on the color of the lightning. We called it "Heat Lightning".

With that being said...the "Derecho" that struck here last summer, I have never seen. Been smack dab in the middle of tornadoes...but wtf is a Derecho? Experienced plenty of strange climate changes. Prime example. This week alone we have had heat in the 90's and by tomorrow we are going to need coats. I actually got struck by lightning in that "Derecho". Devastated my little town and was followed by recording breaking heat. We lost 4 elderly and 2 infants to the heat as we had no power for almost 2 weeks. Yes! I said I was struck by lightning and survived.

Yep out here in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, that is quite a common sight, with and without thunder. Enjoy the show! Seems up north and out east are getting more "western" type storms of late.

Yes Ive seen this a couple times, as a matter of fact this happened here in North Bay, Ontario Canada 2 nights ago. From what I am told it is heat lightning thats why there isnt any thunder. However there was another storm coming right behind the clouds that had the lightning show so there was a few cracks of thunder.

I tried to get vid but my crappy cell phone cam was to dark and only caught the real bright lighting.

Cool vid tho

seen it several times in summer here in Germany, we call it "Wetterleuchten" roughly translated "weatherlighting".... but I have never seen it this strong

just searched a proper translation, it said:
heat lightning
or to be more metreologic
lightning visible, no thunder heard [WMO code 13]

reply to post by AeonStorm


Thank you for this post!!! Yes, I have, and I've wanted to create a thread about it to ask if anyone else has!!! The one I saw wasn't lit like this but the flashes were sooooo constant that it created a strobe effect. It was 2 a.m., and I was living in a house with four floors and a balcony that faced a lake. I woke up and this strobe light was going on outside, so I went up to the fourth floor balcony, and the strobe effect was there, and the bats were flying back and forth and very close to me. In strobe!!!

AeonStorm
I have had many strange experiences and dreams, in my life. The following video plays out almost like one of those strange and lucid dreams. Lightning so intense and so constant that you cannot help but be in awe.

The video:

While this video is not mine, I'm interested if other ATS members have captured or experienced anything like this. I am an avid storm watcher and I never let a good thunderstorm go by without going outside to experience it. I'd love to hear some good stories, if you've got some.

Could you imagine if those strikes were hitting the ground and you were in the middle of it? Yikes!

I have a feeling that freak storms are going to be even more abundant and intense in the near future.

-AS-

P.S. It's been quite awhile since I've logged onto ATS. I have to say I didn't like the new layout at first but it's growing on me.

When I was young we lived in Plano TX for while and one night I watched the most awesome lightning storm I have ever seen. What was amazing about this storm is it was real far away and gradually moved closer and thus got larger. It was a ball of lightning. It was almost a perfect giant circle in the sky. The lightning came out in all directions from the center and was constant. As it moved closer it got larger until appeared to be all around us, everywhere. It was the most amazing event and lasted most of the night into the early morning hours. Mother nature is amazing.

The Bot

reply to post by AeonStorm


I was living in southeastern NC. It was very unusual to have F5 tornadoes and a supercell. I happened to luck out to have it centered over me. It was calm outside. No wind. Just like we had three suns shining outside. The light was so intense the shades in our house were down but the light was still coming through. I have never witnessed constant super bright light with absolutely no noticeable flickering or flashes. Anyone out at night must have been blinded by the light. There was no one out. Well several miles away they were but they had monster tornadoes.

I heard where my father worked a tornado picked up all the gravel on the roof and shot it at all the cars in the parking lot shooting out all their headlights and windows making it real difficult to drive at night with the power off. Apparently there was no blinding light out there.

Here in the South it's just called heat lightning. See it all the time during Summer over or near the water. Lightning never hits the ground just lights up the clouds completely silent. Perfect time for a front porch swing, a pretty southern girl and a big glass of sweet tea.

I saw a thunderstorm similar to this video only over a week ago. I was surprised at the intensity. It wasn't quite as intense as this one but it the thunderstrikes were so frequent in the same exact cloud areas for so long I started to wonder if that was a little reaction to the Fukushima particles in the sky.

originally posted by: AeonStorm
I have had many strange experiences and dreams, in my life. The following video plays out almost like one of those strange and lucid dreams. Lightning so intense and so constant that you cannot help but be in awe.

The video:

While this video is not mine, I'm interested if other ATS members have captured or experienced anything like this. I am an avid storm watcher and I never let a good thunderstorm go by without going outside to experience it. I'd love to hear some good stories, if you've got some.

Could you imagine if those strikes were hitting the ground and you were in the middle of it? Yikes!

I have a feeling that freak storms are going to be even more abundant and intense in the near future.

-AS-

P.S. It's been quite awhile since I've logged onto ATS. I have to say I didn't like the new layout at first but it's growing on me.

Happens when two fronts with high charge clouds slide along past each other or at the confluence where they meet and create a rotational eye.

Constant cloud to cloud discharge between oppositely charged fronts isn't uncommon.

The high altitude lightning doesn't create thunder because of lower air pressure and high winds.
Thunder is a high pressure bubble that expands and then collapses in relatively dense and calm air. A single lightning bolt creates a high pressure path or bubble through the atmosphere by superheating and expanding it. The collapsing bubble causes the thunderclap.

Constant lightning bolts in high thin atmosphere cause cavitation that interferes with the organized high pressure waves that would otherwise create thunder.

My grandfather used to call it heat lightning as well.

a reply to: AeonStorm

last week, in the north of Portugal, there where some lightning without thunder and amazingly without sound. Almost like in the video but not so many and not so fast frequency.
I remember to see violet light.. i never saw that in my life.
it was at night.

originally posted by: symptomoftheuniverse
That must be speeded up,impossible to not have thunder.

no and no. i live in texas and i've seen storms like this. one just a month or so ago... not even the slightest sound of thunder either. it's pretty mesmerizing to watch. of course, if there's a tornado warning along with it i will be inside... i' not fond of tornadoes.