Can heat lightning strike me?
Heat lightning is a myth. While the idea of heat lightning is actually lightning, there's no such thing as heat lightning. Some people believe heat lightning is generated from hot and humid conditions. Maybe you heard the same old story as you were growing up.
Is heat lightning real lightning?
While many people incorrectly think that heat lightning is a specific type of lightning, it is simply the light produced by a distant thunderstorm. Often, mountains, hills, trees or just the curvature of the earth prevent the observer from seeing the actual lightning flash.
What is a red lightning?
Sprites, also known as red lightning, are electrical discharges that appear as bursts of red light above clouds during thunderstorms.
Is heat lightning loud?
An observer may see nearby lightning, but the sound from the discharge is refracted over their head by a change in the temperature, and therefore the density, of the air around him. As a result, the lightning discharge seems to be silent.
What is Spider lightning?
Spider lightning refers to long, horizontally traveling flashes often seen on the underside of stratiform clouds. Spider lightning is often linked to +CG flashes.
What is the rarest lightning?
ball lightning, also called globe lightning, a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning.
What is a sprite storm?
What exactly is a sprite? Sprites are rapid flashes of red light that occur high up in the mesosphere, over 50 kilometres above the ground. Similar to how lightning is an electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, sprites are electrical discharges between the top of a thunderstorm and the upper atmosphere.
Is red lightning real?
Red lightning doesn't exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.
What is dark lightning?
Dark lightning is a burst of gamma rays produced during thunderstorms by extremely fast moving electrons colliding with air molecules. Researchers refer to such a burst as a terrestrial gamma ray flash.
Is red Thunder real?
Red lightning doesn't exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service. The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says.
What is the rarest color of lightning?
Green lightning is a rare phenomenon that can be seen during a thunderstorm. Someone who has seen green lightning is extremely lucky as green lightning strikes are rarely seen. It is so rare that the only photograph of a green lightning strike is one from when the Chaiten volcano in Chile erupted.
Is Gold lightning real?
Yellow lightning is uncommon; however, they tend to be cooler than the blue, lilac and white. They're caused to due to a high concentration of dust in the air. And is an indication of a dry thunderstorm with low-precipitation.
What is fork lightning?
In CG lightning, a channel of negative charge, called a stepped leader, will zigzag downward in a 'forked' pattern – hence it is sometimes called forked lightning. This stepped leader is invisible to the human eye, and travels to the ground in a millisecond.