Storms
S


Cloud Lightning

Lightning hits Hawaiian Air jet; none injured


Associated Press
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:22 UTC
Lightning struck a Hawaiian Airlines plane flying from Honolulu to Hilo on Friday.

Hawaiian spokesman Keoni Wagner says no one was injured but the lightning caused some superficial damage to the plane.

Wagner says about 100 passengers were on board Flight 102 when the bolt hit. The plane landed at 6:28 a.m., about 15 minutes late.
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes give blizzard warning


New Scientist
Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00 UTC
Lightning
© Stock.xchngLightning may precede heavy bands of snow.
A flash of lightning during a snowstorm may be nature's way of signalling that the worst is yet to come.

The combination of snow, lightning and muted thunder occurs occasionally in storms across the temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia, often near lakes or cyclones. Eyewitness accounts of these rare events, known as "thundersnows", date back thousands of years to ancient China, and suggest that lightning tends to strike in parts of the storm where the most snow is falling.

To verify such accounts, Patrick Market and Amy Becker at the University of Missouri, Columbia, studied 1000 lightning strikes in 24 thundersnows. They had previously shown that bigger snowstorms tend to produce more lightning, reinforcing the expectation that lightning would coincide with the heaviest bands of snow.
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Evil Rays

Lightning-Storm Gamma Rays Could Harm Air Travelers

Alexis Madrigal
Wired
Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:14 UTC
San Francisco, California - The most energetic particles in the electromagnetic spectrum could pose a danger to commercial airline passengers.

About every 3000 hours of flying time, a plane is hit with a bolt of lightning. Recently, spacecraft have found gamma rays can be created by thunder storms, and according to new research presented at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting this week, the rays could be intense enough to cause radiation sickness.
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Phoenix

UK: Woman's terror over ball lightning


WalesOnline
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:09 UTC
A woman claimed yesterday to have seen two balls of lightning in her house in West Wales.

Annie Dobson, from Kidwelly, said she was terrified to see the mysterious phenomena bouncing around her home.
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Roses

Lightning strikes only once - but kills 52 cows


Associated Press
Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:37 UTC
Lightningstruck cows
© Associated Press/San Jose Police DepartmentIn this picture released by the police department of San Jose, some of the 52 cows that were killed by lightning lie along a fence on a ranch in Valdez Chico village near San Jose, Uruguay, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008. The cows were killed when lightning hit the wire fence during a fierce storm, according to police.
Montevideo, Uruguay - Lightning struck only once - but 52 cows are dead at an Uruguayan ranch. The newspaper El Pais reports that the cows had pressed against a wire fence during a storm when the lightning bolt struck in the northern state of San Jose.

A photograph released by the San Jose Police Department shows the black and brown cows lying dead in a long row.
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Umbrella

Lightning bolt barrage belts Brisbane

Simon O'Brien
Brisbane Times
Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:29 UTC
Storm Clouds
© Trent FieldStorm clouds just off the Gold Coast.
Power was cut to more than 15,000 homes and hailstones the size of golf balls fell during a severe thunderstorm over South-East Queensland last night.

The Bureau of Meteorology said wind gusts of 102 kilometres an hour were recorded at Amberley, west of Brisbane, at 4.50pm, while Brisbane Airport recorded up to 53 kilometres an hour, and the city 33 kilometres an hour.

Hailstones the size of golf balls were reported at North Ipswich and west of the city at Boonah and smaller hail stones also fell over Enoggera and Newmarket in Brisbane's north.
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Cloud Lightning

Blackouts hit Johannesburg


The Times
Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:54 UTC
A lightning strike on a transmission tower left swathes of Johannesburg without power this afternoon, City Power said.

"It is very widespread," said spokesman Louis Pieterse of the outage which stretches from at least Rosebank in the north east to Mondeor in the south.

Court cases at the Johannesburg High Court, including judgment in the "Jeppestown massacre" case, were among the daily affairs put on hold as technicians tried to repair the damage and restore power.
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Cloud Lightning

Kenya: Three children die as lightning strikes


Daily Nation
Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:30 UTC
Three children died following a lightning strike at Kisima Village in the newly-created Buuri District.

According to the Kenya Red Cross Society, the incident in Eastern Province on Wednesday occurred around 6pm.
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UFO

Venezuela: A UFO Destroyed by Lightning?

Hector Escalante
Inexplicata
Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:02 UTC
UFOs
© Unknown
Ufo and lightning
© Unknown
On September 17 of this year, Jairo Esparragoza managed to capture the flight of an alleged unidentified object that appeared to vanish after being struck by a bolt of lightning.

The event was recorded between 6 and 7 p.m. using the camera of a Motorola Motoraz V3 cellphone as the witness drove along the Guarenas-Guatire Expressway in the vicinity of the Buenaventura Shopping Mall in the state of Miranda in north-central Venezuela.
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Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes as man takes oath

Yang Jie
CCTV
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:42 UTC
In a bizarre incident, a man in eastern China was struck by lightning just as he lifted an iron bar over his head to swear that god would punish him if he had taken money from his friend.

The man, who was identified as Xu, had borrowed 500 yuan (US$73.21) from a close friend surnamed Huang three years ago. Xu, who lived in Fuqing City, Fujian Province, later forgot all about it, according to a news Web portal in Fujian.
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