Subject: Fwd = [UASR]> Multiple Ball-Lightning Event?
From: Frits Westra <fw-nx@...>
Date: 02 Mar 2004 15:31
From: "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1@...>
Subject: [UASR]> Multiple Ball-Lightning Event?
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 16:50:55 -0700
Reply-To: uasr@...
Forwarding permission was given by William R. Corliss.
Science Frontiers, No. 152, Mar-Apr, 2004, pp. 3 & 4
< http://www.science-frontiers.com >
GEOPHYSICS
Multiple Ball-Lightning Event?
May 8, 2003, Alghero, Sardinia.
An account from R. Hooberman, who was staying at a hotel on the
Mediterranean coast. He and his wife were watching a violent electrical
storm at sea from their room. To the Editor of *Weather* he wrote:
In the midst of this event I saw a group of ten or a dozen spherical
balls of light in three rows and surrounded by a sort of halo pass
horizontally before me at eye level, then disappear. The episode
lasted at most three seconds. They were close to each other, moving
horizontally. It is impossible to assess size and distance with no
reference point, but had they each been the size of an orange, I
would estimate that they were perhaps no more than ten to twelve
feet from the window, and that the group was about three feet
across, four to five including the halo. I asked my wife who
was standing next to me, 'Did you see what I just saw?' 'Yes...
they were like a shoal of fish', she replied, which I thought was
a very accurate description.
[Sketch showing what may have been a formation of small lightning balls.
The dusky halo enveloping them is hard to render in this newsletter.]
(Stenhoff, Mark; "A Possible Multiple Ball Lightning Event in Sardinia, 8
May
2003," *Journal of Meteorology, U.K.*, 29:67, 2004)
Comment. A "shoal" of lightning balls; that's a new one. The large number
in the formation is remarkable; even more so is the enveloping faint halo.
[Science Frontiers is a bimonthly collection of digests of scientific
anomalies in the current literature. Published by the Sourcebook Project,
P.O. Box 107, Glen Arm, MD 21057. Annual subscription: $8.00.]