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Far away thunderstorm - lightning or sprites?


walkersc

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On the way home from the U2 concert in Philly last night, we were traveling up Rt. 202 in Chadds Ford about 12:30am, right around Rt 1 to Rt 926.  Twice we saw lightning wayyyy off in the distance.  It did not look like typical lightning - extremely brief flash, yellowish in color - kind of like a strobe.  If I hadn't seen it twice I would have thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.  When I got home, I looked on Radarscope and saw that they only electric storms in that direction were 107 miles away northwest of Scranton/WB!  Would it be possible to see lightning from that far away, or was what I see "sprites" coming out of the tops of the clouds?  I don't know if sprites are only visible in space or from the ground.  Or could it have been upward lightning?

Thanks for any comments.

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On the way home from the U2 concert in Philly last night, we were traveling up Rt. 202 in Chadds Ford about 12:30am, right around Rt 1 to Rt 926.  Twice we saw lightning wayyyy off in the distance.  It did not look like typical lightning - extremely brief flash, yellowish in color - kind of like a strobe.  If I hadn't seen it twice I would have thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.  When I got home, I looked on Radarscope and saw that they only electric storms in that direction were 107 miles away northwest of Scranton/WB!  Would it be possible to see lightning from that far away, or was what I see "sprites" coming out of the tops of the clouds?  I don't know if sprites are only visible in space or from the ground.  Or could it have been upward lightning?

 

Thanks for any comments.

 

 

 

 

I am not sure of the answer to your question, but this fascinating video shows that sprites are indeed visible from the ground, not just from space. (Watch carefully, the sprites are very ephemeral and fleeting, but it's really cool when you see them. I think he puts it into slow motion a couple times too).

 

 

I never heard of yellow sprites, but I am certainly no expert on the topic.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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