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Re: Holy Crap!



Original poster: "Dr. Resonance" <resonance@xxxxxxxxxx>


Yes you did see ball lightning.

Here in the Baraboo bluffs area, a large quartzite rock hillside 900 ft high, it forms on the underside of radio tower guy wires and sometimes travels down nearby power lines, usually around 200 ft/min.

I saw it a lot as a kid. After the ball lightning episodes, leaves would cluster around the tower base guy wires indicating some type of electrostatics at work. Sometimes it would pile the leaves up to 2-3 feet deep and we would play in them.

Dr. Resonance



Hi all,
I am reading some of the descriptions of ball lightning here and getting a little confused as to what I understood it to be. My Dad has told me of his witnessing a ball of lightning hitting the ground, on the farm he grew up on in N. Dakota, and rolling into the barn and catching stuff on fire. He is not one I associate with making up stories but I have always kind of classed this one up there with sitting on top of telephone poles after the snow and walking up hill to school both ways. Having said that, I travel I-95 twice a day here in central Florida, known for liquid sunshine and lots and lots of lightning. One day traveling home I witness a strike to a power pole over a mile ahead of me and a huge (it must have been huge from the distance) sphere of light remained on the cable and traveled across the cable at a relatively slow rate. It lasted so long that, if I had a camcorder I would have had plenty of time to reach down, turn it on, aim and still capture several seconds of it.
Now, here is my question:  Was what I saw ball lightning?

Russ
Monitoring lightning at the Cape