RE: Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "sy" <youngs@xxxxxxxxx>


We had a friend here in Utah that told us of several one to three inch BLs
that appeared mid-air in their house, and then disappeared with a "poof"
sound.  Immediately thereafter, their house was hit by lightning which did
some damage but didn't hurt anyone.
--Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 7:14 PM
To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Ball Lightning

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Mon, 15 Jan 2007, Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "resonance" <resonance@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
 > This may be one explanation of ball lightning, however, I have
 > witnessed it firsthand, and suspect it was an electrostatic
 > effect.

Some BL reports say that it can form suddenly indoors, as if "winking on"
but not drifting in from outside.   If so, then it's not exactly
electrostatic, since a house will shield the DC thunderstorm field.  More
likely it requires a transient high e-field such as those in the miles of
space surrounding a lightning strike.



I see a couple of Youtube videos of apparent ball lightning.

   http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A5B4897404F34F8B