My Orchids. Brushstrokes with a Zoom. Photo ET
Ball
Lightning seen on February 12th, 2014.
On
February 12th, I traveled on Jet Blue from JFK to Fort Myers, on flight JB
1729, aboard an Embraer 190, seat 21D, a right window seat. The flight was very
shaky as the whole US East Coast was under an important winter storm.
Two
hours into the flight I saw at my right side, a bit aft, at the distance of
about the span of the wing from the plane and maybe 20 feet behind the right wing,
a dancing fireball with sparkles of a white-yellowish color. It was swirling
and exploded. Though I was wearing headphones, I heard a muffled explosion. The
event lasted maybe 2 seconds. No one else on the plane seems to have witnessed
it. Indeed many were a bit frightened by the turbulences, and clinging to their
seats. And there were only 4 rows on the plane behind me who could have seen it. A few moments later
we were at the height of a thunderstorm, with some lightning going.
I
tried to find an explanation to the phenomenon. As a former student majoring in
aerodynamics, I could imagine a reason for the swirl but not the fireball,
unless it was static electricity surrounding the plane.
I
found literature that describes the extremely rare phenomenon of "ball
lightning", which still is not well explained. Therefore I post this out
there for anyone who wants to think about it.
One
explanation has been advanced that explains that a lightning strike on the
ground vaporizes silicon from the soil, which then elevates as a fiery ball. I
don't think that there was silicon several thousand feet above ground. This
needs another explanation. Maybe this helps those who chase this elusive
phenomenon for an explanation. A good first look at it can be found on
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
I experienced something similar about 30 years ago whilst flying around heavy thunderstorm weather at night. A lightning ball occurred in our DC-8 cockpit and crossed slowly at knee level, from close to the Flight Engineer panel and departing quite slowly past my seat (copilot) and to a point below the rudder pedals. We later assumed it to be a charged ball dust and dirt from the cockpit of this old plane, and although it physically brushed my left pants leg I felt no effects other than a "raising" of my body hair. There was a strong smell of ionisation accompanying this. A little startling and very interesting !
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