St. Elmo’s Fire? Ball lightning? Will o’ the wisp? It’s hard to find YouTube videos of these things. I trust Dopers to give me interesting firsthand accounts. So dooooooo tell.
(pulls up chair and popcorn)
Back in my radio days our studio was directly underneath the tower (for you non-broadcasters that’s the big pole thing that holds the actual antenna). Any halfway decent thunderstorm overhead led to lightning hitting the tower and an incadescent blue-purple glow shooting down the tower and all the guy wires.
I usually didn’t get to enjoy it that much as the lightning knocked out the transmitter and I had to keep getting up and putting the station back on the air.
This is the most anecdotal, questionable, probably-something-completely-mundane story ever, but when I was five or six years old, my bedroom had a giant window right across from my bed. One night, I was woken up by this huge, kind of electrical ball floating right outside it. I had lost a tooth the previous day, and still believed in the tooth fairy, so I just thought “Well, I better let her do her job” and went back to sleep. Looking back, chances are it was a blurred street lamp or something, but it was definitely strange.
As the OP, my best story isn’t much better. When I was a kid, we lived in Kansas where it would get pretty dry (compared to Indiana/Illinois, where I’ve lived ever since). My bed sheets were a cotton-poly blend. One night after a potty break I was running back to bed and ripped the covers up to jump in. A whole bunch of static electricity discharged between the top and bottom sheets. I think it was green, and there were ten or twenty strings of it at once.
Once in college I was riding the campus shuttle bus back from the mall to the dorms and we got caught in a hell of a hail storm. Then lightning struck the bus. Or at least sufficiently close enough that it made little difference. The bus’s headlights blew out and we were all deaf for about a minute, but otherwise fine.
I sure was glad I opted not to ride my bike that day.
uncommon but not unusual.
arcing into the room with noise from a phone jack during a lightning storm.
My uncle once saw, as a child, what he now believes was ball lightning. He was looking out the window of his room one night, and saw a round whitish light which he assumed was the Moon. Then it exploded, leading to him waking up the whole house with his cries of “The Moon exploded! The Moon exploded!”. The electrical lines enter the house right outside of that room, and he reckons the ball lightning followed them.
For a while we lived in an old farm house that apparently had terrible wiring. When it stormed balls of electricity would shoot out of the plugs across the floor. They never made it to the other side of the room but it freaked us out trying to dodge them. Running to the car and sitting out the storm seemed like a good thing to do.
I’ve been hit by lightning many, many times- small lightning bolts, two to three feet long, but they pack a wallop (thousands of volts).
I work for a company that produces an electrically charged plastic film. It clings to windows, doors, walls etc. and is primarily used for advertising. For example, movie posters can be printed on our film that will stick to the wall without glue, tape, thumb tacks or any adhesive.
I used to operate the charging machine that zapped the film with electricity (now I’m a lab technician, more involved in R&D and testing). As the film is charged, then rewound in large rolls, excess charge can build up. It then discharges as a lightning bolt. It goes POW and there is a bright orange or blue flash. The flash scorches the film and leaves an imprint of a lightning bolt (they look really awesome). If I’m too close to the roll when this happens it can reach out and touch me- and let me tell you, it tingles a bit.
Give me a little time (it being Friday evening) and I can post some photos of the lightning bolts. It’s part of the job here and everyone who works on the production end has been zapped at one time or another.
Oh, this was about 40 years ago, I was a teenager. In our house. In the kitchen. During a thunderstorm.
I was talking to my siblings when a lightening flash and thunder interrupted our conversation. When the thunder faded, I heard a crackling sound coming from the dishwasher. Curious, I opened it. It was empty, but there was a ball of sparks running around the heating element in the bottom. Freaked me right out.
This is slightly off topic, but I got introduced to capacitors in a very shocking fashion.
I was given an old radio from my great uncle, circa 1930s maybe? It didn’t work and I, as an inquisitive 13 or 14 year old decided I would try to fix it.
The wiring inside was all point-to-point: no circuit boards or anything, just a spaghetti mess of wires and components.
I would fiddle around in the spaghetti mess, tugging and twisting and separating components, and then I’d plug the radio in and see if anything happened.
Imaging my astonishment when I was fiddling around in the unplugged radio and got a major fucking jolt of electricity. How could this be? The damned thing was unplugged!
I then learned about electrical storage in capacitors.
ETA: BTW: I got the damned thing working after all!
I was camped at Bryce Canyon N.P., I got up to take a leak in the middle of the night. Was it when I unzipped the tent a spark traced along the zipper as it went. It was bright white and cast a shadow. It didn’t shock me, even though my fingers were on the pull.
I’m guessing St. Elmo’s Fire?
It was 1974 or 75. The wife and I were driving up to SF along I5 in the Central Valley.
It was night, and all of a sudden the radio (AM) got nothing but static. All across the dial nothing but loud static.
Then way off in the distance was a bright pin prick of light. It looked almost like a welding arc viewed from say 50 yards away at night. As we continued to drive toward it the light source got larger and brighter. We drove maybe 4-5 miles and it was obvious the light source was at the top of a power pole (a Local pole, not one of the gazillion volt Hetch Hetchy lines supplying power to So Cal)
As we approached it the source was a power pole off the side of the freeway, at the top of the power pole was a transformer. The transformer was completely encircled in a ball of electrical arcs about 4 feet in diameter.
There was a CHP officer stopped there just looking at it. Because of the officer I did not stop, but looking back, damn I wish I had stopped.
We continued on our way, after about 6 more miles of driving we regained radio reception.
At the time I was driving an old points and condenser car, I wonder what would have happened with a modern all electronic car with that much RF.
interference.
I have no idea what I saw, but damn it was strange.
Oh man, I haven’t had bedding that does that in years. Used to provide all kinds of entertainment until sleepiness ensued.
I was watching TV one evening when the power went out, and there was this incredibly loud BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ and a daylight bright blue-white glow coming from the south. It sounded and looked like a UFO crashed, or like the end of the world. Kinda freaky, for a bit, when you don’t know what it is.
What it was was a driver had a heart attack and drove into the power substation about a mile away. A most impressive display!
I don’t know if it qualifies as unusual but I once saw lightning strike a tree about fifty yards from where I was. At that distance, you don’t see the lightning - it’s just a huge flash of light and a really loud explosion. The result was the tree being charred black and split in half.
I was maybe 5 y.o. and in the kitchen with my mother and my aunt. All or a sudden something shot across the kitchen and ended behind the oven. It looked like an orange burning tumbleweed. And the 3 of us, in unison: “What was that?” I’m sure there would have been cursing, if i hadn’t been there.
And the best place to witness a thunderstorm: within the Grand Canyon. The sound just reverberates back and forth, like the grumbling of giants.
They’re not the best photos, but here and here are examples of the lightning bolts I described in post #9. The ruler in the first one is 12 inches (30.5 cm) for scale. The scissors in the second one are about 8 inches (20 cm).
Most of the lightning bolts we see are smaller than these- the big ones we save and put on the wall.
Those pics are really cool!
That is really cool. Ever tried to sell 'em on eBay?