UFO or Ball Lightning

[crunchy5]

Here's a vid from the good Dr Fong, the site admin think it's ball lightning but the guy who took the vid thought it was a UFO, I prob go with the ball lightning call, but I'm not sure.

http://drfong.blogspot.com/2006/12/stra ... tning.html

Though the young man in the video seems to think these balls of light are some sort of alien craft, they look like what is called ball lightning to me. He is right to be scared, though as it is very dangerous.

He and his friends should be much more careful as ball lightning is very mischievous and likes to zoom into open windows and doors. Once inside your house ball lightning will head for your most expensive piece of furniture and promptly set it on fire.

These guys are very lucky to have witnessed this as ball lightning is very rare and mysterious.

 

[GNC]

Yeah, probably ball lightning, but I wish the cameraman had been more professional to give us a better look at the lights, they keep floating off screen. And if they're alien craft, they're obviously Johnny Cash fans because you can hear their stereo playing.

 

[smoothvirus]

Unless Ball Lightning uses FAA standard navigation lighting, I'd say what we have here are several airplanes being routed by ATC around the storm.

 

[crunchy5]

I thought I'd entitled this thread UFO or Baal lightning, has a mod missed my feeble Baal joke (the possibility of UFOs being Satanic) and corrected it as a mere spelling mistake. If so thanks for saving my blushes

 

[smoothvirus]

This video, on the other hand, may be the genuine mccoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ4onhiGbTo

 

[Skeptical01]

I saw that Johnny Cash video when it first surfaced several months ago and my first thought was that the light sources were convention aircraft of some kind. As for ball lightning - how big is it? I'm not sure it would be visible from a distance of several miles (as would be indicated in the clip).

As for the second video, it's too short to make any real analysis. Would it have been that much hassle to pad it a few seconds on the front and back? That would at least give you the chance to get a feel for the situation. As it is, there looks like there is a jump cut between the first light source and the eventual flash of lightning. That would lead me to question whether the two are actually related.

S

 

[Mythopoeika]

Though the young man in the video seems to think these balls of light are some sort of alien craft, they look like what is called ball lightning to me. He is right to be scared, though as it is very dangerous.

He and his friends should be much more careful as ball lightning is very mischievous and likes to zoom into open windows and doors. Once inside your house ball lightning will head for your most expensive piece of furniture and promptly set it on fire.

These guys are very lucky to have witnessed this as ball lightning is very rare and mysterious.

This makes it sound like ball lightning has some guiding intelligence, but this is needless anthropomorphism.
There may be a simple scientific explanation for ball lightning's behaviour - static electricity, magnetic fields, the location of a grounding point - all of these can cause attractive forces that influence the movement of the ball lightning.

Some years ago, my sister saw some ball lightning enter her house through one wall, and it exited the opposite wall with a loud fizzle and pop.
At the point where it exited, there was a wall socket.
It seems logical to me that it would it would head straight towards a grounding point. I have no idea why ball lightning would head for furniture, unless it was either grounded or just in the way.

 

[wembley8]

Lightning in general is pretty strange in the route is 'decides' to take to Earth. According to Martin Uman - one of the top lightning people - aboust as many people see ball lightning as see lightning strike an object, about 2% as I recall.