[AZ-Observing] Re: Thursday Night's Sky Viewing

What a storm!  I moved here in 78, and I'd have to say it was one of the
largest I've ever seen.  I just checked AZCentral to look at some of the
storm photos, and I have to say I'm glad I wasn't in the city.  I watched
from my deck here at Heimhenge in New River, where I have line-of-sight to
South Mountain.  There was no rain here, but I saw so much lightning I
turned off most of my electronics and just sat outside for the lightning
show.  With my panoramic view, I could see lightning activity across the
entire valley, and, as Tom noted, it was virtually continuous strikes for
the 3 hours I watched.  It was still going when I went to bed around
midnight.  I do have a lightning rod system on my home, so although the risk
is never zero, I feel safe enough unless the lightning is really close.
Here's some details of what I saw ...

When the lightning gets close enough, I can often see a corona discharge at
the tips of my lightning rods.  I look at them through binoculars from the
safety of ground level, and against a dark background, the faint purple glow
of "St. Elmo's Fire" shows clearly.  I saw none last night, reinforcing my
feeling of safety.  As I said, most of the activity was far south of New
River.  One of these days I'm going to wire an ammeter through a shunt on
one of my grounding wires, just to help gauge the local electrical activity.

Most of what I saw was cloud-to-cloud lightning.  A few extremely long bolts
ran almost 45 degrees across my feild of view.  At the distance of the
storm, this translates to a distance of 40 miles or so, longer than any
cloud-to-cloud I've ever seen.  There were also many cloud-ground strikes,
some of which persisted for at least 1-2 seconds.  These were thick bright
bolts ... the kind that start fires where it isn't raining.  But most
interesting were the "blue jets."  From my long horizontal perspective at
2200 feet elevation, I can often see the tops of clouds where these things
form.  I saw at two quite clearly during the 3 hours I watched.  Blue jets
are sometimes described as "cloud-to-space" lightning, although in terms of
charge flow, they should be described as "cloud-to-ionosphere."  Unlike most
normal lightning, they are distinctly bluer, mostly straight, and vertically
oriented.

What a show!  Rivals some of the best meteor showers I've seen, which
includes that Perseid shower back in 79 (?) or thereabouts.

Gene, your hypothesis about the metal lathe in your stucco wall makes sense
to me.  That type of "buzzing" is often reported near metal structures.  You
need to get yourself a lightning rod system, especially if you're gonna sit
outside and watch these things.  :)

Dan Heim
President
Desert Foothills Astronomy Club
http://www.dfacaz,org

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