Unusual Lightning

Abstract

IN NATURE for Aug. 1, p. 189, Messrs. H. E. Beckett and A. F. Dufton describe “Unusual Lightning”. From their description it appears that what they saw was the illumination of a cloud by lightning taking place inside it; the discharges were probably very high up, and went from one part of the cloud to another. Such discharges, which may perhaps be in the nature of a series of discharges through the clouds, often last a second or more and are sometimes many miles long. Lightning may take place very high up in the clouds, sometimes in the hybrid cirrus. In the ‘Guildford storm’ of Aug. 2, 1906, the lightning, at the time the storm crossed the South Downs, was almost entirely in the hybrid cirrus about two miles above the surface, and the thunder was quite faint even when the discharges were vertically overhead.