Tonight we decorated the house a bit, put up some lights outside, and about an hour or so after we got done a lightning storm came through that lasted about 30 minutes or so. I stood by the sliding door of my bedroom with my camera to get some short video clips of the lightning, and decided to step outside on the balcony to pick up some of the sound. There were a couple pretty good flashes and you could hear the thunder and everything, and then this one lightning bolt struck pretty close and was REALLY bright. The video doesn't do it much justice. We were able to pause the video and watch it in small increments, and we were able to pause it during the strike, and one frame right after and the whole area we live in was so well lit you'd think it was recorded in the middle of the day. I still see the lightning strike in pretty good detail when I close my eyes and I took this video about 30 minutes ago. There are some buildings across an empty lot in front of our house, they're probably 200 feet or so away from where I was recording, and the 3 other video clips I got you could clearly see the lightning strike several miles behind those buildings, but this one clip you can actually see the lightning bolt in FRONT of them. What's strange is that the sound doesn't come until a second or two after the strike. I guess we'll go out in the morning and check to see if it really did strike in that field right across the road, but I'm thinking it has to be some sort of optical illusion. I just can't think of any other way you can explain the lightning bolt appearing in front of those buildings. Those of you who have been to our house know how close they are. I uploaded the video to YouTube, I'll try to post it in this message, but if for some reason it won't play you can just go to this link to watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMsgkFXMGu8
ok i was finally able to isolate the frames showing the lightning strike and then the flash of light afterwards and make jpegs out of them.
3 comments:
That is crazy! You are a brave man-I don't think I would want to step out on the patio during a storm like that!
What the heck! You could have been hit by that! I hope Ann gave you a good smack for that one!
It was pretty neat though. I had lightning strick a power line pole right as I drove past it on Leveridge St once- pretty scary- sparks and I know what you mean about it staying in your eyes.
Shelby watched the video with me a few times- she was amazed!
Ryan I think you are right. That has got to be an optical illusion- I watched it a bunch of times and kept pause and playing it. That is so crazy! Did you figure out if it struck in the field or not?
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