When Positive Lightning Strikes - A Compilation of Its Power and Awesome Thunder.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 чер 2017
- The thunder from positive lightning sounds more like powerful bombs than the thunder we're used to hearing. It seem to rumble forever because unlike the more common negative lightning, positive lightning bolts form from the top of the thunderhead "anvil" and can be miles long. A positive bolt can carry a current of 1 billion volts, more than 10 times that of a negative one. The sounds of the thunder alone demonstrates the difference.
- Наука та технологія
Conclusion: Positive lightning will have a sudden boom, then a constant rumbling
Unless it has an angular lead that passes over you at high altitude toward a relatively distant point. Then you'd hear the crackling of the leader first before the loud boom and rumble, like in the first video.
Josh S Interesting
no positive lightening is more violent and therefore much louder and brighter. a visual difference is that it is a direct line of lightening. it does not fork out into many strands.
the rumbling you may encounter is the sound coming back. it is that loud that it may literally echo and reverberate
Its easy to distinguish only when the strike is close. Within a mile or two negative strikes are preceded by a 1-3 second “warning” crackle ( from low sub-cloud branches ). A close positive strike thunder is an abrupt bang, like a gunshot, as there are no lower branches. From a distance of more than 2 miles its harder to distinguish one type from the other as cloud-level branches are usually heard before the main boom in both cases. Some negative strikes deliver a lot of current through multiple return strokes in quick succession, and are thus also very loud and powerful sounding.
Positive CG lightning will always have a sharp "shotgun blast" type boom followed by extended rumbling with some sharp cracks mixed in.
The thunder sounds like a rocket launch in a few of them.
Sounds like a damn howitzer. I love positive lightning. Feels like horse kick to the chest.
iv felt that B4 quit Gnarly
I once had a positive CG hit a barn 15 feet away from my house at 5:30am as I was carrying my breakfast over to my table, which was facing the barn. I was just about to turn on the light over the table when BOOM- it hit!!! It scared me so badly that I dropped my food, and it was so blinding that I couldn't see for several seconds. Oh, and that thunder. . . It shook the windows so hard that a glass sign on one of them cracked! Additionally, the bolt charged the plumbing in my house, and my mom nearly got zapped when part of it shot out of the kitchen tap as she was using it. Needless to say, never run a tap when there's a thunderstorm. My mom was incredibly lucky that it didn't hurt her.
I'm glad neither of you were hurt. Mother Nature can be really nasty sometimes.
Josh S At first, I was too wowed to realize that it had gone through the faucet. It was as if someone dropped a MOAB! I am also really surprised that the bolt chose the barn over the 100ft tall trees surrounding it.
Josh S This is also why I now avoid running water when lightning is near.
I saw your story on another video. Very interesting. Lucky nothing got majorly destroyed.
What an amazing experience!
I've known about positive and negative lightning since I was a child but did not know about the difference in sound, until now!
However I do recall one particular thunder storm I encountered back in summer 2007 which was unlike any other I have previously (or since) experienced.
It must have been a positively charged storm, whith mostly intra-cloud strikes. The amount of visible lightning was minimal, but the noise was terrifying! It was like bombs going off, almost continuously for about 10-15 minutes. You couldn't just hear it, you could feel it vibrate the air, like when you stand right next to a massive speaker that literally shakes your bones! The booming went on and on and on, there was no gaps in between. It sounded like the gates of hell were opening up but to look at it was nothing special - Very much like the clip at 3:18-3:56 but almost continuously for 15 minutes.
I've seen positive lightning leap out of the top of thunderstorm clouds like twice, such a rare sight
I still remember the most obvious positive lighting I have not seen but heard. The sounds shock the ground like a heavy land machine passing, but in a split second, with a boom like a bomb went off.
0:47 wow.. that thunder!!
.yo More like a sonic boom!
.yo positive lighting in a nutshell
Sounds as if a colossal giant just blew off the entire mountain top with one serious punch.
Incredible rumble.
Sounded like the chelybinsk meteor.
@@trulyinfamous YOU ARE RIGHT MY MAN, LOVE YA, HAVE A NICE DAY
Positive strikes are impressive...The concussions are even MORE impressive! Capturing the sound of them, however are a skill by itself.
3:01 It's damned close when every speaker in your house goes snap!
2:48 was like a bolt from Zeus
Pretty sure this is what scared the shit outta me and the puppy at the end of July. Storm had already passed, rumbles were fading into the distance, so mom asked me to take the puppy out for a quick leak. Just before we got to the potty corner, MASSIVE flash, and I had just enough time to think, “oh shit,” and the ground SHOOK from how loud the thunder was. Me and puppy thought the exact same thing and bolted back inside (pun somewhat intended). Poor mom felt so awful for sending me out just then, even after I reassured her (and myself) that it wouldn’t have hit me regardless, and that there was no possible way she could have known that would happen. Guess that’s why they say to wait 30 minutes after the last thunder before going out in the open again?
Positive lightning is very loud and a very powerful killer.
Thunder Bay (lol) gets a fair chunk of this. You know it is a good one when the china is shaking :)
Great one :)
Nice compilation. I love lightning and thunder.
One of these beasts hit probably about 200-250 yards away from my house, and damn was it ever loud, someones car alarm went off
The shockwave is powerful, even from a distance. I remember one night I was walking home from work in a storm when a bright bolt of lightening lit up the entire sky. I figured it was nearby so I braced for the immediate, loud thunder. Nothing happened until about 10 seconds later and the thunder, while not ear-splitting, sounded like it was coming from everywhere and every car alarm in the area went off. That's the power of nature at work.
I've been waiting for something like this!
I aim to please. :-)
That you do.
That last one starting at around 4:33 was the best! When I was just a kid, I used to pretend that thunder was rocketing airplanes setting off in to the sky. As the sounded, the planes were getting further away. Being totally blind since birth, I guess I had a pretty wild imagination.
Ironic that I thought a plane crashed when I first heard one
I heard this lightning last summer multiple times. It's so satisfying to hear in person.
Ohh that's so beautiful lighting
That last one was crazy!!
The lightning was spectacular.
I bet! I wish there was more lightning where I lived. I only get a handful of really good, strong storms each year where I live.
2:48 Holy shit that sounded like a cannon shell
From an reeeaaally big cannon.
Hey. Nice compilation and thank you for using my video, but next time please give proper copyrights, I am sure someone could get angry about that! :)
My apologies. I meant to but I overlooked it.
I was wondering if someone with expert knowledge can tell me if it's possible to have rare thunderstorms with predominantly positive lightning? Back in 1994 in Wales, we had the most unusual storm early in the morning. The day before was the hottest day in many years. Anyway, this storm could be heard for two hours before it arrived off the sea as a constant rumble mixed with what sounded like faint sonic booms, which got louder as time passed, which was really unusual. In the other storms I've experienced over the years, you don't usually hear thunder until the storm is approaching. When it did arrive, the lightning was so frequent, but always single, straight verticle CG strikes. There was no streaking or CC lightning. And such a slow moving storm. It lasted two hours. (I lived high up with a good view and watched the whole spectacle). The thunder is what etches it in memory, like huge explosions/sonic booms, unlike any storm I've ever heard and resulted in lots of local damage - fires, chimneys being blown off, lots of cattle killed and eventually a huge explosion at a local oil refinary. I also remember that there was hardly any rain or wind in this storm, and the rain came much later... it was the most electrically charged storm I've ever experienced, you could feel it in the atmosphere. We've had rare storms since with much more constant lightning (like a strobe light) and really intense, but they still don't come close to this. I'm always left wondering if the severity of the thunder was because of continuous positive strikes that were on the leading edge of the slow moving storm (the single, straight verticle CG continuous strikes), or whether the lack of precipitation meant there was no buffering to the sound. 🤔
Positive lightning's thunder is long and drawn out because, as you mentioned, it originates at the top of the storm's anvil and the high altitude edges of the storm where the high positive charges are, usually 30,000-60,000 feet up. A positive bolt's thunder can be heard up to 25 miles away and a strike can occur almost 30 miles from precipitation. The combination of the bolts length, distance from you and the speed of sound make the powerful thunder reverberation long and drawn out (I timed one on a UA-cam video at 43 seconds). Sometimes they'll occur within the storm but not constantly.
Hope this helped. 👍
@@joshs4594 Thanks for the reply and information 👍 That would make sense considering the rumbles were heard hours before the storm arrived (it was well out at sea and the sky was clear at dawn when it could be heard), and they were very much deep, bass-like and drawn out, usually starting with an explosion sound, and seemed to 'echo', which I think might have also been enhanced by the lack of ground precipitation. It was totally calm, still and silent. Very strange.
I've just come across this - hard to decipher the technicalities, but apparantly there exists a rare type of "reverse charge polarity" thunderstorm, normally a supercell, which produces predominantly positive lightning on the ground. The study looks at the possible environmental factors that might give rise to these types of rare storms (and concludes a number of things in the mix)...
shareok.org/handle/11244/299935
@@joshs4594 I had an experience in Minneapolis in October a few years back where there was an insane electric storm. Nothing I had ever experienced in recent years. It was very frequent cloud to ground lighting, and many of those strikes positive. Seemed to last a good while. It was intense. 🌩
Lightning expert here.
Yes it's possible to have a storm that produces predominantly positive lightning-- sometimes very frequently-- from the core. What's actually happening is that these storms develop complex charge structure-- in some cases this leads to the main electric dipole being outright inverted so that there is a main positive charge where there usually is a negative charge. Scientists are still researching why some storms charge this way... the current hypothesis is that in certain temperature and moisture environments the ice crystal/graupel collisions transfer charge the other way.
I'd like to clarify that positive CG lightning doesn't always originate from the top of a storm, nor does this explain why it's so loud. The volume is due to the greater average peak current, the branchless propagation near the ground, and the negative leaders on the other end of the flash that are louder and often longer than positive leaders.
Here is such a storm that moved through my hometown last September: ua-cam.com/video/65huen3R56k/v-deo.html
Every strike in this video was positive.
We had a random possitive lightning stike our village in the early hours. One loud booming blast like a bomb had gone off, It was only because of the trailing rumbling that I realised what it was.
We had a few other bits of lightning and then it stopped just as quick as it began, we lost power breifly and the internet was out for a day. Absolutly defeaning sound, and can feel the shake.
I saw one about 20 mins ago, it was crazy!
A couple weeks ago I woke up in a disoriented fright from a deep sleep by what sounded like a bomb being dropped on the neighbors. I hadn't heard about any expected storm and thought it was the start of war or something... I didn't recognize what it was at first and heard another extremely loud boom and echoing, -painfully loud and causing the building to shake. I was wearing an eye mask and didn't even notice the first flash. This was the bigining of the dry lightning storm that started california's recent and ongoing bay area wildland firestorms.
Across the street, one of the Elm trees had been struck twice!!! One of the trees main trunks was split in two, and fallen down on the utility line. I've heard thunder many times before in my life but NEVER like that before!
Oh wow! That's why I wear earplugs during storms. I'm a fairly light sleeper, so any bit of thunder can wake and keep me up.
Ever seen the guy in the film the great outdoors. He knows what positively charged lightning is.....lols
Is that the one with Dan Akroyd and a Bald Bear?
@@seanrosenau2088 yes indeed bald headed killer bear from claire county. 🤣
A thunderstorm would be perfect is if this was the only type of lightning in it
That would be spectacular.
God I would've loved to have seen that one at 4:27 in slow-mo.
I'm making a sequel to this video and I'll pot it in there. 👍
I personally witnessed a three-inch thick 14-foot high plate glass window get cracked by the thunder from a positive strike ~ 2 miles away, in Rochester Hills, Michigan on October 19, 1999. The storm had lasted three and a half hours, and there had been no lightning or thunder for an hour, but rain was still teeming down. The flash was red in color; the concussion was equal to a 5.2-magnitude earthquake, and maybe three times the blast of the explosion of 18.5 tons of class-C explosives on the Brooklyn (NY) waterfront on December 3, 1956. I was about two miles away and it picked me up and pushed me back about three feet. My grandparents' house in Jackson. NJ rattled. Items fell off shelves in Amityville, Long Island.
Yeah, I’m gonna have to call BS on the “pushed me back three feet” claim. A blast wave powerful enough to throw you would also cause lethal internal damage, particularly to the lungs. It’s common for blast victims to report a sensation of being thrown back, but that’s due to the rapid pressure changes screwing with your vestibular system.
I don’t catch these enough on video I really want to it’s very calm until the giant boom comes or a super intense rumble I’ve caught like two or three probably a few more not sure
We had a storm hit here earlier a lot of positive and negative strikes scared the living fuck outta me and I was heading home from work it’s been awhile since we had a nasty storm like that pop up
My brother once helped to guys who had been hit by the lightning. They were surprised by a storm fishing at a big lake, and didn’t come to shoe in time 😓😓. He called for help, and both of these men had heart problems. They would have died if my brother came across them.
Recently a massive lightning strike hit really close to our house and judging by this video I’m guessing it was positive lightning because the entire house shook and I heard rumbling in the sky for the next 30 seconds
Actualy this is explanation
There are two types of lighting postive and negative. You see when a negative charge is transferred from a cloud to the ground, it's known as negative lightning and it causes main chanel to flicker wich has effect that its stricking on same place and its most usual lighting strike ever and it makes up about 90 to 95 percent of all the lightning you ever see. By contrast, positive lightning happens because of that positive charge that builds up at the top of the cloud, these lightings are far more dangerous and have higher chance of killing its victim, its temperatures can rise really hot up to 50000 degrees Fahrenheit(27 760 degrees celcius) thats roughly give times hotter than the surface of our sun, those lighting strikes usualy strike and fade right away and rarely flick and its thunder has effect of the exploding bombe than thunder we used to hear from negative charges, so one will kill you and other will likely kill you.
I had a positive CG strike an oak tree I was standing under trying to get all the patio furniture put away. The stormed seems far off, but never trust and Positive CG strike, they travel for miles and miles
Liar... If you were standing under a tree that got hit by a lightning strike, ESPECIALLY a positive lightning strike, you would not be here right now telling lies in the comment section of UA-cam.
One just hit Louisville, Kentucky lmao
0:12 - yes
0:46 - oh yes
1:08 - yes
1:33 - no
2:07 - not likely
2:35 - no
2:47 - so so
3:00 - yes
3:19 - yes
4:01 - oh yes
4:27 - no
2:07 was definitely one, you could tell by the very sharp thunder
2:35 was definitely positive. No branching. And a powerful boom.
Also, positive can still flicker. Just not as much or as frequent as negative.
@@jace_Henderson yup, that crack at the beginning is unmistakable
The last one was most definitely positive
Fa fantastic thunderstorm in the nation.
3:00 You can hear the electricity fry shit
You know it’s positive lightning when it sounds like a bombs going off.
I remember one day we had a quite heavy rain shower but we didn’t think it was a storm but omg I was sitting in my room my curtains were closed so I didn’t see a flash but all I heard was a super load boom. I honestly thought that something exploded in my back yard.
And the next day we looked out and it had struck a tree just a few hundred feet away. The hole tree was basically split down the middle and there were just big planks of wood with bark still on laying everywhere.
Sad because it was a chestnut tree that I always got chestnuts from when I was a kid but obviously it’s dead now.
Alphanatrix1067 *
LoL if something exploded In my back yard I would go see right away
The lightning is also very unique as well
Unzipp
Just kidding But man it’s great to get familiar with certain Thunder especially with good Headphones
It's strange, everybody is saying that positive lightning are largely more bright than negatives. I find them to be more tamed in terms of brightness hmmm
You're right. There's not much difference in brightness. I've sometimes seen a yellow tint on positive lightning. Also, the bolt is generally straighter than the jagged negative strikes.
There's a reason for that. Lightning has negative and positive sides. Negative lightning and positive lightning refer to the cloud. The positive end is brighter. Negative lightning is positive at the ground, so the bright side of negative lightning is closer. Positive lightning is five or ten times longer and the brighter end is that much farther away, so positive lightning can be much brighter without being that much brighter from the ground.
It’s also the most deadly
@@joshs4594 positive lightning can be jagged as I have seen on one or 2 vids of positive lightning curving and it can flicker but that is rare but I have seen positive lightning snake to the ground and a huge loud rumble and multiple sonic booms as I saw in Nottingham uk
That's surprising... perhaps you're misidentifying the polarities. It's also possible that you've observed low peak current +CGs... there is no rule that they must have a high peak current. The very weak ones that I've observed simply look like cloud leaders touching the ground-- no big return stroke pulse.
if you got hit by positive lightning, would you lose your hearing?
You'd likely lose your life.
@@joshs4594 this will not help my weekly nightmares involving lightning storms. I always end up in a thundercloud feeling helpless and scared to death of getting struck by a lightning bolt
@@jine7123 Well, the good news is that lightning in dreams won't harm you in reality.
@@joshs4594 Just while you're in those dreams, it is terrifying
@@jine7123 I know.
How do you tell positive from negative? I seriously doubt I personally would be able to tell the difference between the two, in a split second strike.
Oh yes you can, believe me. Unlike thunder from negative lightning the thunder from positive lightning rattles the windows and walls, even from high altitude cloud-to-cloud strikes. The characteristic is the deep, loud popping. Listen to the first one on the video. First you hear the distant thunder from the step leader starting from the top of the thunderhead and the instant it makes contact with the positive streamer on the ground the discharge is far more powerful than negative lightning is. These usually occur at the leading edge of a storm.
Postive lightning sounds like a bomb
QRPYWRPY >>> Thanks. Sorry, should have read the description below the title. Just noticed it. It would have explained it all there. 🤦♂️
Josh S >>> Thank you for the detailed explanation. That is so fascinating to me because I never knew this.
There was one time in my life that I heard the “bomb like” thunder from a lightning strike, but I thought it was simply because I was so close to the strike, that the thunder was instant & had no time to rumble.
*Can negative lightning ever sound like a bomb if it’s close enough to you?*
Or does very close negative CG have its own unique characteristic sound-print?
If it's very close it can cause serious damage much like a bomb. Once a positive strike hit the top of a apartment building a friend of mine lived in. The next day we went up to the roof and saw that several bricks on one of the top corners of the roof's walls were gone and there was burn marks on the remaining bricks surrounding it. About 30 bricks or so were just blasted away. That's an example of positive lightning's power.
Positive lightning occurs most often at the end of storms that have been unusually violent or of long duration (2 hours or more). The lightning is reddish in color and the bolt, while often five miles long, is straight and does not flicker. Thunder from such a bolt has been measured at 712.7 decibels; by comparison, a salvo of nine 16-inch guns from a battleship registers "only" 234 decibels. That means that the thunder is 10 to the factor of 4767 times more powerful than the salvo. And your mother told you not to put your fingers in your ears because it would damage your hearing, and it didn't look good besides?!
Just had a severe thunderstorm pass through. Had some crazy positive lightning at the beginning of the storm
Yes, but it isn't always at just the end of a storm. It can be right in the middle of it. 🌩
Do you have a source for the volume claim? I'd like to look into it.
@@thelightninghunter23 University of Oklahoma.
@@josephlindquist506 More specific?