Lightning slowed down 300x.

[snagglepuss]

http://www.wimp.com/lightningslowed/

[gtar100]

1. Some may worry about lightning striking twice but it looks as though within a matter of one second

lightning will strike three or four times in the same spot. Pretty darn awesome! Even at that speed there is an awful lot of flickering and flashes

[Warpy]

3. I counted 20 strikes at the target at center left

and they all followed exactly the same path, first dim strikes and then huge ones.

I've never heard more than a loud crack followed by a few crackles when I've been in a building that's been struck or when I was a kid and the transformer on the pole outside my window got nailed.

I guess we're lucky that all the successive strikes merge into one loud noise. We might be deaf, otherwise.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. Yes, I agree...

it is like the electricity found an easy path and kept following it.

[Towlie]

8. No, it's like the electricity MADE an easy path and kept following it.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Thanks. I got a charge out of watching that.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

9. do you mind

If I give you a whack in the snout for that?

[allan01]

4. reLightning slowed down 300x.

fun to watch the steped leaders trying to find ground and the reverse ligthning . wonder what all the activity was in the upper left of the screen
.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Awesome, thank you! nt

[unionthug777]

6. shocking !!!!!!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. I shot this during the last big storm....

[progressoid]

15. Kind of off topic but,

How did you create your gif?

I made a little gif for a client in PhotoShop. I saved it with the "save for web" thing. It works fine for me in various browsers but when I emailed it to her, she can't view it.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

16. I use Linux. So first it was open the video from the camera with Openshot...

From there, save it as a series of .jpg files and then I combined them in a terminal window with this command:

convert -delay 150 -loop 0 image*.jpg animation.gif

Easy.

[progressoid]

18. OK.

I don't do the linux. Thanks though.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. On Windows I've used Animation Shop. It came with Paint Shop Pro....

But that was over ten years ago.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. BTW: On the picture itself, that lightning looked like it was aiming straight towards me,...

....but missed. The crack of the thunder was nearly instantaneous so it was damn close.

[progressoid]

19. Yeah, those kind of make your heart skip a beat.

Maybe it missed you because you're such a "positive" person.

***rimshot***

[CFLDem]

11. Pretty cool!

[gopiscrap]

12. that's pretty cool

[samsingh]

13. frighteningly powerful

[JayhawkSD]

14. Ever see lightening hit a Saguaro cactus?

In case you are not familiar with the plant, it's a vertical cactus, often as much as 30' tall, usually with arms. They are filled with water and sometimes get hit by lightening. Not real often, because they grow on slopes and not often on peaks or level ground, so the lightening usually hits higher than where the cacti are.

But when one does get hit, the water in the barrel instantly vaporizes, and the explosion rivals anything the military has in its ordinance stores. I actually saw that happen once on a camping trip, about two hundred yards away, and I happened to be looking almost directly at it when the lightening hit. Any more directly and I would have been blinded. As it was, I thought the local Air Force base had missed the bombing range. Scared the crap out of me.

[Left Coast2020]

21. I got a better one for ya.

Back in the 90's I was working at a radio station in Lewiston Idaho. The AM tower was directly behind the building about 40 yards. In the summer, a T-storm rolled through and hit the tower. Everything went dark the instant it hit. Sparks came from the transmitter panel and even smoked a little. It took me a minute to figure out that it was from the lightning, and not what you described from an errant military training session. You want to talk about scaring crap out you and a friggin near heart attack? My damn blood pressure must have been near 200 after that friggin BOOM! It was seeing the control panel shoot out friggin sparks that scared the crap out of me.

The cable that went into a tube that went out to the tower was slightly melted and the coaxal portion (inside portion) was fried totally.

At the time, I was in the station by myself. Another staffer was listening when the signal cut out and put two and two together.

But another staff person got a taste of what I experienced about 2 weeks later as the STL link(microwave link to the FM tower) was hit by lightning which was on the roof of building. I'm sure whoever was on duty then had similar emotions after hearing that boom. Fortunately, I was not there.

[Major Nikon]

23. I've seen a lot of communication tower lightning strikes

Or at least the after effects. It's very common.

I used to do lightning protection engineering for communication facilities. What you describe is very typical. The lightening is always looking for a path to ground, so most often the damage happens at the point at which the cables exit the tower to go into the building. I was inside a large microwave communication facility once when lightning hit the tower. It also came down the power lines and exploded most of the light bulbs inside the building. It scared the shit out of all of us.

[Major Nikon]

22. I was driving along the highway and lightening hit a tree next to me

I almost shit my pants. The tree exploded and it sounded as if a bomb went off next to me. In the military I've seen explosive ordnance that wasn't as loud. I had to pull over just to calm down. I was so close my car had shards of wood all over it.