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THUNDERSTORM 0011
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Date: 08-05-1998 to 09-05-1998
Time: 23:55 - 00:48 BST
This was the first substantial overhead thunderstorm for 1998 for
Macclesfield, and it was
dramatic in it’s fury too. It was fairly large, close-by, and we had clear displays of
blue C-C in the night-sky after the clock struck midnight, one of which gave
a thunder loud enough set car alarms off and buffet the windows.
As midnight was drawing in, I hung out of the window to smell the
warm and humid spring air of the night, and I thought that it was a perfect
atmosphere for a night-time storm. As I thought that a faint distant flash
occurred in the
corner of my left eye, so I prepared the camera. As it drew in closer, I started
to hear some distant thunder with the lightning flashes, which meant it was
within a good 10-20 mile thunder-audibility range. I started to film
pointing towards the west based on the flashes I saw. After a few more
discharges the lightning was starting to
get brighter and closer and it started raining. It was then I realised the
storm must have been approaching from the southwest.
I had told myself,
before the storm came, that if an overhead storm did eventually come today then
aim the camera up at a higher angle into the sky (than I usually did) to
capture any overhead I-C or C-C lightning. In 1997 I used to aim the camera so the
ground was visible in order to capture the full arc of C-G strikes, and as a consequence
I was missing what was going on overhead. So I aimed the camera upward and it
was about to pay
off. Eventually the rain fell harder as the storm passed directly overhead, giving
a total of four
excellent close-up displays of C-C, I-C and a few other distant C-Cs and
flashes. I wouldn’t have got these brilliant new shots if I hadn’t have
aimed the camera at a higher angle.
The first C-C took me completely by surprise. I hadn't realised the lightning hotspot of the storm-cell had crept directly overhead until I was blinded by two incredibly bright C-Cs streaks across the sky. I had to blink afterwards it was that bright as I could still see the outline of the lightning burnt into my retinas, and if that wasn’t enough I was deafened as well. Precisely eight seconds after the discharge the most phenomenal thunder I’ve heard crashed across the landscape setting off car alarms and buffeting the windows (more about this later). The following close-by C-Cs weren’t as energetic as the initial. This I can justify because the second C-C was exactly the same distance away judging off the thunder, maybe a fifth of a mile closer, and the thunder wasn’t even half as loud. This shows how lightning can vary in electrical properties depending on the magnitude and environmental conditions of the discharge. Most of the remaining lightning discharges were seen as C-Cs with branches and feelers, somewhat extremely photogenic and beautiful.
Here are some detailed statistics of the initial loud thunder at the
beginning. It
took 8 seconds for the first thunder-waves to travel from the lightning to
where I was, which was equivalent to approximately 1.6 miles away (2.67km).
This is a fair distance for a thunder of this magnitude. Unusually high-amp lightning,
possibly C-C in conjunction with an unseen P-F (positive flash) occurrence,
was most likely the cause of this. The thunder was about 30 seconds
in duration suggesting that it may have been of upper-anvil origins with
along-channel.
CLICK BELOW FOR VIDEO OF IMMENSE DISCHARGE (Youtube)
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