Re: Holy Crap!

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Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Russ,

While it could have been ball lightning, it was more likely that what 
you saw was an electrical arc that the lightning stroke initiated 
between one of the phases and a nearby ground wire (such as the one 
at the top of poles for protecting the power lines underneath). Once 
initiated, a phase to ground arc can persist for quite some time 
before stopping either by being self extinguished, or by eventually 
tripping an upstream ground fault detection relay (a 3-phase version 
of a home GFI or arc fault detector... but on steroids).

Bert"

   I used to see something similar that when I lived in Washington, 
DC many years ago (1945-7).  I lived in Anacostia, across the river 
from town and the streetcar line on Pennsylvania SE was a couple of 
miles away.  The streetcars at that time used  "plough" running in a 
tunnel underground and midway between the two rails.  When it snowed 
and the snow froze in the opening to that tunnel (I don't think 
Washington clears away snow even to this day, apparently in the 
belief it will never snow again in spite of lots of experience to the 
contrary and "why not give the government workers another day off") 
the ploughs would sometimes break off causing an arc to start between 
the two conductors in the tunnel.  When this happened the arc could 
travel for miles, sometimes even reflecting at the SE terminal of the 
tracks.  The result was a brilliant blue-green glow in the clouds 
which travelled along the horzon!  Although I saw the "lights in the 
sky" several times I never saw the thing up close but the description 
above came from a engineer friend of mine who saw it more than once 
as he waited for the car.
Apparently from that view the thing was really spectacular.

   Phenomenon was sort of a cross between a horizontal Jacob's 
ladder and a rail gun.

Ed