Back in the late '90s or early 2000s there was a winter lightening storm in northwest Georgia, the lightening was running laterally like fingerlings, no rumbles no crack, no thunder at all, total silence. Freaky weird...
It was sometime back in the early 90's, I was on my last military ship. We were northbound along the US East Coast, coming home from our patrol area down in the Caribbean, late at night. I went up to take some air, reflect a bit, to the flight deck. Several others were up there or went about the same time (USCG Cutter, no helo, we had flown it off earlier back to Airsta Miami)and the hanger was one of the few places left for smokers to burn one. We entered a front, an absolutely enormous lightning storm, the likes of which I had not seen before nor think I ever will again. No rain, just clouds and lightning, horizon to horizon. Chain lightning, ball lightning, plain old Zeus thunderbolts. It was incredible, beautiful, majestic. During one particularly long rolling flash we saw one of our sisterships, heading south to the patrol area, our replacement, silhouetted against the night sky. A shipmate and I were lying on our backs on the flightdeck, just watching it all, when we both felt the hair on our arms standing up. One of us said, "Oh shit, run!" and we did, back inside the hanger. By this time it was probably 0200, so we went below and hit the rack. That night we lost two of the large whip antennae's struck by lightning. Not a rare occurence, just uncommon. Pretty impressive though, to see that long length of fibreglass and metal lying shattered on the deck.
That storm came through Mobile & there was a lot of lightning like that. Somebody got video of it driving across the causeway.
ReplyDeleteWeird Science
ReplyDeleteBack in the late '90s or early 2000s there was a winter lightening storm in northwest Georgia, the lightening was running laterally like fingerlings, no rumbles no crack, no thunder at all, total silence.
ReplyDeleteFreaky weird...
IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteBackwoods Okie
It was sometime back in the early 90's, I was on my last military ship. We were northbound along the US East Coast, coming home from our patrol area down in the Caribbean, late at night. I went up to take some air, reflect a bit, to the flight deck. Several others were up there or went about the same time (USCG Cutter, no helo, we had flown it off earlier back to Airsta Miami)and the hanger was one of the few places left for smokers to burn one. We entered a front, an absolutely enormous lightning storm, the likes of which I had not seen before nor think I ever will again. No rain, just clouds and lightning, horizon to horizon. Chain lightning, ball lightning, plain old Zeus thunderbolts. It was incredible, beautiful, majestic. During one particularly long rolling flash we saw one of our sisterships, heading south to the patrol area, our replacement, silhouetted against the night sky. A shipmate and I were lying on our backs on the flightdeck, just watching it all, when we both felt the hair on our arms standing up. One of us said, "Oh shit, run!" and we did, back inside the hanger. By this time it was probably 0200, so we went below and hit the rack. That night we lost two of the large whip antennae's struck by lightning. Not a rare occurence, just uncommon. Pretty impressive though, to see that long length of fibreglass and metal lying shattered on the deck.
ReplyDelete