A particulary nasty storm passed through houston earlier this week and in addition to flashes of the normal “white” variety I saw quite a few flashes of green light. What is the deal? Does it have to do with transformers?
Possibly a lightning strike hitting electrical gear and vaporizing copper wire? Copper plasma emits green light.
It’s not copper, it’s oxygen. Green streaks are a characteristic of high energy lightning strikes.
Dunno about green, but I once camped in the mountains for a week or so - I saw a storm coming and decided to huddle in the lean-to for a while, surrounded by tall trees for miles and miles. The cloud cover was not quite over me before lightning started flashing over the next range, and I could see once in a while a colored flash ABOVE the clouds… going to nothing, apparently. Maybe discharging up to the stratosphere?
cdhostage
Sounds like you kight have witnessed massive postive strikes from ground to earth, these carry the most energy of all strikes.
They can form sprites, these are huge and at times sort of mushroomy shaped bursts that emanate above a layer of cloud and go way up to 75km or more into the atmosphere.
These were unknown until recently.
Look around the middle of this page.
http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/lightning.asp
and more on sprites,
http://elf.gi.alaska.edu/
You are very fortunate to see them indeed, the viewing conditions required are very critical, and as such have only been scientifically reported for around 15 years.
What you saw has been missed by mankind for millennia, if you’d seen that phonomenon 20 years ago they might have named them after you!!
"I could see once in a while a colored flash ABOVE the clouds… "
Possibly you saw a Red Sprite or Blue Jet.
casdave is Quick today !
I’ve seen lots of white and green flashes at ground level all around the horizon during WINDstorms (not a thunderstorm.) The flashes light up the rain and sometimes light up the cloud banks above. It obviously was downed power lines arcing. The adjoining neighborhood had a blackout, but our lights just flickered during the whole storm. If your thunderstorm had high winds, that’s where the green flashes might have originated.
*evilhanz *
It’s not copper, it’s oxygen.
Maybe. But green to me sounds most characteristic of a power flashover triggered by a lightning strike. Azael, where did the green flashes appear to be coming from? See the West Virginia Lightning site:
http://wvlightning.com/faqw2.html
http://wvlightning.com/powerflash.html
*evilhanz *
It’s not copper, it’s oxygen.
Maybe. But green to me sounds most characteristic of a power flashover triggered by a lightning strike. Azael, where did the green flashes appear to be coming from? See the West Virginia Lightning site:
http://wvlightning.com/faqw2.html
http://wvlightning.com/powerflash.html
*evilhanz *
It’s not copper, it’s oxygen.
Maybe. But green to me sounds most characteristic of a power flashover triggered by a lightning strike. Azael, where did the green flashes appear to be coming from? See the West Virginia Lightning site:
http://wvlightning.com/faqw2.html
http://wvlightning.com/powerflash.html
*evilhanz *
It’s not copper, it’s oxygen.
Maybe. But green to me sounds most characteristic of a power flashover triggered by a lightning strike. Azael, where did the green flashes appear to be coming from? See the West Virginia Lightning site:
http://wvlightning.com/faqw2.html
http://wvlightning.com/powerflash.html
Sorry for the multiple post (system seemed to have jammed). Moderator, please could you remove the duplicates? Thanks.
**
I believe you nailed it right on the head. The flashes I saw were low to the ground, the storm was very windy (fences all over the neighborhood were knocked down), and the power went out.
Nice work, thanks for the help!