Way Cool: High-Speed Lightning Videos

Last summer, I did a series of educational blog entries about Lightning. One thing I didn't address then, was how we are learning more about lightning from high-speed cameras, because there wasn't much concrete information that I could find at the time.

Yesterday, this article on USAToday led me to the ZT Research website where they do lightning research with high-speed cameras, and these YouTube videos of said research.

Having seen a lot of lightning videos over the years, I can tell you I've never seen anything like this. These are probably the coolest lightning videos I've ever seen. Below are the best two videos of all of Tom's, in my opinion. Remember: Each of these videos is covering a fraction of one second.

"An example of lightning captured with high speed video. The video above shows multiple stepped leader channels followed by a single return stroke, continuing current and M-components. The flash was captured near Devils Tower, Wyoming on 6/16/07."

"Positive leader development captured on 7/6/08 in Rapid City, South Dakota at 1,000 images per second. Two primary leaders travel right to left. Multiple recoil leaders visible." NOTE: There is a zoomed, slowed-down version of this video which is also cool.

Absolutely incredible. These videos will go a very long way to explaining how lightning works, though if you look at the strikes themselves, they are still too fast for even these cameras. Since lightning moves at 36,000,000 mph, you need cameras shooting 7,200 frames per second like Tom Warner's (meteorologist for ZT Research), as opposed to standard video cameras which are 30-60 frames per second. As technology improves, faster cameras will no doubt uncover additional wonders of this weather phenomena.