Lightning Facts

• A "Positive Giant" is a lightning strike that hits the ground up to 20 miles away from the storm. Because it seems to strike from a clear sky it is known as "A Bolt From The Blue". These "Positive Giant" flashes strike between the storm's top "anvil" and the Earth and carry several times the destructive energy of a "regular" lightning strike.

• "Lightning Crawlers" or "Spider Lightning" can travel over 35 miles as it "crawls" across the bottoms or through squall line "frontal" clouds. This rare type of lightning is very beautiful as it zaps from "horizon-to-horizon". However it can turn deadly if it happens to strike the ground at the end of its super long path! {Lightning Crawlers from The Blue!}

• The temperature of a typical lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the Sun!

   

• How big around is a typical lightning bolt? Answer: About the size of a Quarter to Half-Dollar! Lightning looks so much wider than it really is just because its light is so bright!

   

• Lightning Strikes create powerful radio waves in the frequency range of 3 KHz (audio, VLF) through 10 MHz (shortwave radio). The VLF (3000 Hz to 30000 Hz) "lightning signatures" can travel around the world, allowing monitoring of world-wide lightning. The shortwave "lightning signatures can travel half-way around the Earth (the night-time side of the Earth). The best region to listen for distant shortwave lightning signatures is from 2 MHz through 7 MHz. After 3 AM local time you can listen to 3 MHz and hear the beautiful dispersion-ringing of the static as it bounces back-and-forth between the earth and ionosphere. It can at times sound like hundreds of tiny bells ringing at once!

• Red Sprite lightning is a newly-discovered type of lightning that zaps between the 40 mile span between the tops of severe storm clouds to the lower ionosphere "D" layer. Red Sprite Lightning looks like a giant "blood-red"-colored jellyfish having light-blue tentacles. Red Sprite Lightning creates extremely powerful radio emissions from 1000 Hz through VHF.

• Red Sprite Lightning has been associated with very powerful "Atmospheric Gamma Ray Bursts" Nuclear Radiation from Lightning Strikes!

  UHF Television Signals easily reflect the electrical path ways that lightning creates! Tune your hand-held scanner (or TV) to the sound carrier frequency of a 200 to 300 mile distant UHF TV station in the range of CH 14 to CH 21 (you should NOT be able to receive the station at all under normal weather conditions!) When lightning flashes, sometimes you will hear about 1/4 second of the TV station's sound! We discovered this during an experiment by tuning a hand-held scanner to 475.750 MHz

  z which is the sound carrier for UHF TV Channel 14 (normally "dead" here). We heard TV "sound blips" instead of the UHF lightning signatures we were looking for! Do not experiment when lightning is nearby!