My husband noticed it first and called me over - the sky to the south of us looks like a weird kind of storm that I’ve never seen before. There are no clouds but we keep seeing flashing lights like lightening, only there’s no thunder. After a while of looking out the window I return to my room, only to have him call me over again. There were six triangular lights that went across the sky - first three and then another three. I have never seen anything like that in my life.
I’m listening to the scanner now and people are calling into the police now. One person said he thinks it’s a downed power line because he sees flashing lights. Others don’t know what it is. From here it looks like a big storm, but low and flashy.
DH is talking about hopping in the car to check it out.
So, in a few hours, purple haze will post an update to this thread:
“Everything is fine here. There is no cause to be alarmed. Everything is completely normal. There is no need to notify the planetary defense authorities.”
Your location says you’re in Indiana… Where abouts in Indiana? Rural, urban, suburban? What’s to the south of you? Do you see anything unusual happening to your north?
Leaffan is correct that it could be an aurora (they can do some pretty weird things, including flashes and “windshield wiper” lines of light moving quickly across the sky), but if that were what it is, then you’d probably expect to see even more of it to the north.
It could also be a thunderstorm, and you’re just too far away to notice the clouds or hear the thunder.
We took a drive and found a somewhat hilly spot, where I took video of a really cool looking storm in the distance. From the house there are trees blocking the view and it was difficult to see, but in a wide open space it was much clearer. It lit up most of the lower sky just south of us but there really weren’t many clouds. Heat lightening?
I really wish I could have got whatever it was that went across the sky. There were six objects all together. The first three were in sort of a triangular alignment and the next three were in a row. They were triangles and I wish I knew what was up with that. I hopped online and accessed radioreference.com to listen to the live feed - people were calling in to report the lights but they came and went too fast for anyone to figure out what they were.
Too bad my SIL isn’t here. She believes in aliens and is always talking about our imminent invasion.
I’m in Jersey and I saw weird lightning yesterday too. Nothing like triangles, but the biggest, fattest bolts of lightning I have ever seen just kind of randomly striking down from a cloudy blue sky. Since it was 102 degrees outside I’m guessing it was heat lightning, but man, I have never seen lightning that big before.
Last night, there was a storm about 40 miles away from me (central Ohio), and it was really bright. I was surprised when I saw how far away it was on the radar, because it was lighting everything up. They did say on the news that they had been extremely tall, though, so I’m guessing that helped.
“Heat lightning” isn’t a product of the temperature. It’s just distant lightning from regular thunderstorms.
Distant lightning from a high-based storm, I should think. Far enough away that you can’t see the clouds or hear the thunder, but you can see the reflected flashes of lightning.
I’ll bet if you check the radar records you’ll see there was a storm within 100 miles or so of your location at the time in question.
Oh. Well nevermind, then. I suppose it was the regular sort of lightning. It was raining a bit, but no thunder. I’ve just never seen lightning like that before. Especially from such a great height.
I have the feeling this isn’t the last we’ll see of weird weather.
Was there a nightclub nearby that just opened, or a wedding party?
This time of year sees me getting loads of hires for parties and weddings out in the sticks - people get a big marquee set up in a paddock and have a right old blast. Skytrackers help people find the party. Sadly, the best conditions for seeing the beams of light are when there’s low cloud building up, which generally means it will piss down with rain in the near future.
Without any smoke or mist, the beams of lights can’t be seen reaching back to ground level where the unit is located, so you just see flashes or shapes moving briefly across banks of cloud. Same as with a searchlight or even a laser pointer - you rarely see the entire beam - you usually just see the focal point which is being lit.
When a nightclub opens and they hire these lights, I can almost guarantee that there will be a report in the local paper the next week, that UFOs and mysterious lights were spotted. The club then get themself a nice bit of free publicity when they “reveal” that the lights were sitting on top of their roof. I’m sure no-one really thinks it’s the War of the Worlds, but what else have small rural local papers got to report?