Scenic picture thread

[Uncwilly]

I have been within 120m of a lightening strike. Some friends were ~10 and ~30m away. It had struck a tree, it blew a strip of bark off the tree.
The sequence of FLASH-BANG was so quick that there was no time to register that the flash was a strike before the noise hit. There were screams and one person fell out of their seat.

[PhilF]

One fine day in Oklahoma, as I was sitting at my ham radio bench, lightning hit my antenna tower. The tower was located just outside of the window of the bedroom I was in. Most of the strike was conducted to ground through the tower, but it still took out one radio and burned out the light bulb in the room. Not to mention what it did to my heart rate.

[MooMoo2]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I made the A-frame at tree line in about 3 hours. That's about 9 miles up the trail. I felt fine. Four miles to go. I reckoned this was going to be easier than I thought. Wrong! Those last four miles took me four hours. As I got further up, I slowed down. And, I repeatedly had to stop. It was the darnedest sensation. I wasn't gasping for breath or anything like that. I just couldn't move. I'd sit down until I felt like I could move again, then get up and totter a bit further.

I think that if I went solo at my own pace (as opposed to trying to keep up with my group's pace), I might have felt the same thing as you did. We'll see, though; I'm in better shape than I was last year and might give it another shot this summer.

Originally Posted by LaurV

Very nice! And very nice photos. Thanks for sharing. I am a bit amazed by the fact that there was no snow at over 4k meters. (my highest point ever was a bit below 3k)

I've actually seen flowers above 4k meters on my Whitney hike. They appeared to be Sky Pilots (Polemonium eximium). They're in full bloom for only 2-3 days a year, so I lucked out.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

I have been within 120m of a lightening strike. Some friends were ~10 and ~30m away. It had struck a tree, it blew a strip of bark off the tree.
The sequence of FLASH-BANG was so quick that there was no time to register that the flash was a strike before the noise hit. There were screams and one person fell out of their seat.

I have been close enough a couple of times that the flash and boom seemed simultaneous. One of those times was when lightning hit a tree along our street. It was after dark, and we had windows open. My dad remarked that he could smell ozone.

Another time included a very strange experience. There had been an afternoon thunderstorm. The storm passed, and the sun came out. I could see some small dead branches from our gigantic elm tree had come down in the yard. I decided to go out and pick them up. As I started down the back stairs, I saw something that stopped me. One of the little bunches of leaves out at the end of a branch disappeared with a popping noise and a flash. I started scanning the power line in the alley to see if the branch was on it. It wasn't. Then another bunch of leaves when poof!

That got me leaning back in the door, calling out, "Hey, there's something strange going..."

BOOM!

The BOOM! was accompanied by a blinding flash of light. Our tree had been struck by lightning. If I hadn't seen what I saw before the strike, I likely would have been within 5-10 meters of the tree, picking up sticks when it happened.

The strike also revealed some shoddy electrical work next door -- the induced current burned out an illegal connection of two wires that wasn't in a junction box. Apparently the electrician who did it hadn't had a long enough piece of wire to get from the junction box to the light fixture that suddenly didn't work after the lightning strike, and cheated.

I learned the meaning of the strange pre-strike apparitions many years later. It was "return feelers" from the ground trying -- and failing -- to connect to the "stepped leader" coming down from the now-distant thunderhead.

Some years after that, my sister told me a friend of hers had seen something similar when she was young, but everyone she had told at the time thought she was crazy.

She was relieved to learn, though many years later, about what she had seen!

[PhilF]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

I learned the meaning of the strange pre-strike apparitions many years later. It was "return feelers" from the ground trying -- and failing -- to connect to the "stepped leader" coming down from the now-distant thunderhead.

Here's a very rare picture taken at precisely the right moment to see those feelers. The one that connects first is where the return stroke will strike.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by PhilF

Here's a very rare picture taken at precisely the right moment to see those feelers. The one that connects first is where the return stroke will strike.
Picture

Hmm, is it those very faint lines that start at the bottom of the picture in front of the palm, and zigzag up and to the right?

I remember seeing a TV show that showed a different picture of a "feeler" that didn't connect when another one did. It looked like a miniature lightning bolt sprouting from the ground and only going up a few feet.

I've been told that if you're in or near a thunderstorm, and your hair starts to stand on end, hit the deck! (It means "return feelers" are climbing up you.)

BTW our elm tree had a strip of bark blown off. The lightning then travelled along our metal "cyclone fence" and it looked like balls of fire shot up from the posts. My sister eventually found the fulgurite where the lightning went to ground.

Many years later -- different locale -- I heard a tremendous clap of thunder -- not simultaneous with the strike, but pretty near -- and after the storm passed was able to find the large tree that had been struck. A big strip of bark had been blown off. Some of the pieces had landed about 100 feet (30 meters or so) away. A bit later I talked to the guy whose yard the tree was in. He'd been out walking his dog when the storm hit. When he got home, he found that his computer, which he'd left on, was fried.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Hmm, is it those very faint lines that start at the bottom of the picture in front of the palm, and zigzag up and to the right?

That is a lens artifact. It is an offset of the main flash downward by ~2/5th.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

That is a lens artifact. It is an offset of the main flash downward by ~2/5th.

I thought it might be -- it looked too faint to be the "feeler" -- but I couldn't place it as a lens artifact. Thanks!

(looks harder for things coming out of the ground) OK, I think I've found the "feeler" just to the right of the main bolt. It looks like a little lightning bolt coming out of the ground and ending in mid-air.

[bsquared]

Originally Posted by PhilF

Here's a very rare picture taken at precisely the right moment to see those feelers. The one that connects first is where the return stroke will strike.

More info on that picture and more high-voltage goodness.

http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/...Pos-Lightning1

[kladner]

More from Giant City. We are pining. We were supposed to be there about 10 days ago.

[MooMoo2]

Originally Posted by ixfd64

Monument Valley, December 2006: https://flickr.com/photos/ixfd64/13199259743

Nice. I went there almost exactly a year ago, in late April 2019.

There's a restaurant that overlooks that area. At sunset, almost all of the tables had food but no diners. Nearly everyone (including many of the servers) left their tables to take pictures.