Re: Aircraft and lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Bob (R.A.) Jones" <a1accounting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>




> Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Tesla list wrote:
>
>  > I have observed such tendril sheets move from horizon to horizon from a
>  > storm several miles away.
>
> Now THOSE are freaky.   I never saw them myself, but had people ask me
> about them via email.  They were described as totally silent.  One
> eyewitness said they were pink, very dim and hard to see, and acted like
> parallel filaments all marching along with one end growing and the other
> end vanishing.  Then I saw something similar on video, on one tape of the
> "Tornado Video" series.

My description was poor. Here is a link to some pics of the effect.
http://www.sky-chaser.com/schlight.htm

The discharges are bright and easily observed even during the daytime.
Obviously at night with a black sky the effect is spectacular.
>
>  > Its even possible to follow them with movements of your head.
>  > The one that I assumed made my hair move, progressed  almost instantly
>  > across the sky and with no sound.
>  > It appeared to be at a relatively low altitude compared the sheets I
can
>  > follow with my head.
>
> Yeah, you might expect these to be silent, since the current at any
> particular point in the plasma filament would smoothly rise and smoothly
> decay. But then cloud-to-cloud lightning should also be silent, no?
> Hmmm.  Speculation: I wonder if two networks of plasma filaments grow
> within clouds (or one triggers the start of a distant one.)  Then if they
> ever connected together, there'd be a big bang, as with any capacitor
> discharge.

The whole discharge path glows again as the tendrils branch in to more
distant parts of the cloud.
With one distant storm occasionally you could observe the growth in three or
four stages as the discharge progressed horizontally.

Robert (R. A.) Jones
A1 Accounting, Inc., Fl
407 649 6400