This video is a slideshow of a series of photos I took with my drone as a storm approached Brisbane, with a strange phenomenon that I'm unfamiliar with. You can see a horizontal bolt of lightning s...

This video is a slideshow of a series of photos I took with my drone as a storm approached Brisbane, with a strange phenomenon that I’m unfamiliar with.

You can see a horizontal bolt of lightning slowly crawling its way across the sky from left to right. What’s interesting is that each frame of the slide is an 8 second still, meaning that the bolt was visible in the sky for over a minute!

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    8·
    12 days ago

    Apparently there’s something called “anvil crawler” lightning that can work its way across a cloud.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lightning_phenomena

    Anvil crawler lightning, sometimes called spider lightning, is created when leaders propagate through horizontally-extensive charge regions in mature thunderstorms, usually the stratiform regions of mesoscale convective systems. These discharges usually begin as IC discharges originating within the convective region; the negative leader end then propagates well into the aforementioned charge regions in the stratiform area. If the leader becomes too long, it may separate into multiple bidirectional leaders. When this happens, the positive end of the separated leader may strike the ground as a positive CG flash or crawl on the underside of the cloud, creating a spectacular display of lightning crawling across the sky. Ground flashes produced in this manner tend to transfer high amounts of charge, and this can trigger upward lightning flashes and upper-atmospheric lightning.[1]

    But in the video I see of it, while it’s sustained by lightning standards, it all looks much shorter duration. This video is titled “Epic 3.72 second anvil crawler lightning”, so over a minute seems unlikely.

    Are you sure that it’s not an aircraft, maybe illuminated in one way or another (e.g. a break in the clouds in the distance letting sun illuminate it directly, maybe?)

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      12 days ago

      This would have been a very low flying aircraft, flying directly in to a very energetic thunderstorm! I have the 100MP original stills too, and there is no sign of an aircraft that I can make out

      A close up of a small horizontal lightning bolt

      • saltesc@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        12 days ago

        I had friends from Australia send videos of that storm in the last 24 hrs. I’m doubting any aircraft were in the air lol

      • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1·
        12 days ago

        considers

        I still like the idea of an object, because it’d explain the slow and constant speed. I wonder if it’s possible for a conductive object, like aircraft, to induce strikes by being more-conductive than air. If it were flying along and there were a series of strikes on the aircraft. I can find footage of aircraft being hit by lightning in-flight, but not of one being hit repeatedly, though.

        • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          12 days ago

          This is a post processed cropped version of one of the original stills. I have a hard time believing there’s an object behind it…