The Weather Notebook: A Glowing Grapefruit

A Glowing Grapefruit
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Dave Thurlow, Host

"Hi, my name is Rebecca Cook." And my name is Dave Thurlow. I'm from the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire and I'm here today to bring you another edition of the Weather Notebook. Rebecca on the other hand is from Tecumseh Michigan, where she listens to The weather Notebook on WUOM in Ann Arbor. She called us recently to relay a story.

A simulated photo of ball lightning. Bizarre Electrical Phenomena

"When I was in college, too many years ago, in the dead of winter, I heard what sounded like a train. And I walked out into the common area to see if anybody else had heard it and everybody's staring out the window and across the drive from us, forming on the power lines coming out of the dorm across the way was ball lightning. It was absolutely beautiful. It was truly electric blue. There were probably 3 or 4 of them. It was amazing."

I'll bet it was amazing. You're not the only one to let us know about ball lightning. In fact, it's estimated that one in twenty people have seen ball lightning.

What's so great about these reports is that ball lightning was thought to be figments of people's imaginations until recently and it was the consistency of the reports that led scientists to keep trying to figure out what ball lightning is. And have they? Well not exactly.

Ball lightning is associated with lightning strikes, most reports say it looks like a glowing orb about the size of a grapefruit and as bright as a forty watt light bulb, and that it moves horizontally, sometimes disappearing with a small exploding sound. But the energy source is not known. That's why we like to get these reports, the more there are the more we can learn about this mysterious part of the weather.

The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.