Storms

Lightning bolt makes healer of Indonesian village boy

Tom Allard
Age
Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:27 UTC

Mohammad Ponari was, until last month, a typical kid in the impoverished East Java village of Balongsari. Then, quite literally, lightning struck.

The nine-year-old, who had been playing in the rain in his front yard, was hit by the thunderbolt but, to the astonishment of his young friends, he was unharmed.

All the more bizarre, according to an account by his village chief and his family, when he came to, he found a stone the size of an egg on his head, and was convinced he possessed healing powers.

A boy next door with a fever was his first patient. The stone was placed in a glass of water and the boy drank deeply. His fever vanished.

Then another neighbour approached him, a woman in her 30s who had suffered from a depressive condition for 15 years. She, too, was healed.

The miracles, large and small, kept coming, said Nila Retno, the local village chief.

Severe storms hit Cyprus: one dead

Philip Turner
Famagusta Gazette
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:13 UTC

A man was killed by lightning during a severe thunderstorm in the Cyprus capital Nicosia yesterday.

Police said the man, an immigrant worker, was struck while working in fields in the buffer zone, about 25 kilometres west of Nicosia.

He was taken to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

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.

Lightning strikes give blizzard warning

New Scientist
Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00 UTC

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.

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.

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.

Lightning strikes only once - but kills 52 cows

Associated Press
Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:37 UTC

© Associated Press/San Jose Police Department
In 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.

Lightning bolt barrage belts Brisbane

Simon O'Brien
Brisbane Times
Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:29 UTC

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.

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.

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.