UNUSUAL WEATHER PHENOMENA

I lived in Wa. state for five years, so I was used to the Northern Lights every fall but, once I saw, what I can only call a "Black Rainbow". I was outside, before going to bed, making sure the barn doors were shut. It was a, freezing, winter night, clear, accept for a few large clouds. Frost, but, no snow. The full moon was very bright. I was admiring it, when I saw the "Rainbow". It was shades of the palest grey to charcoal. Has anyone else ever seen this? How does it happen? Beth Marshall-Smith <wordsmyth a paxway com> Dallas, TX. USA - Saturday, August 03, 2002 at 21:31:25 (PDT)

I am writing this at 2300 on sept 19, 2002. i have just witnessed the following: At approx 2200 est on september 19, 2002, i was ouside with my dog and on the phone with my girlfriend. i was watching a lightning storm to my west. the temperature was approx. 20 degrees celcius, and there was wind varying from dead calm to gusts that bent over the thinner branches of nearby maple trees. there was no rain at the time, and the lightning was very active, but not particularly violent. at around 2210 i thought i noticedm movement to my north. i presumed it was just wind in the trees, and continued my conversation and watching the storm. a few minutes later, i noticed the same movement again, but also noticed that i seemed to be illuminated. once again i assumed that it was my imagination, but watched this part of the sky instead, as there was little lightning now to my west. at around 2215, i saw it again. just above the tree tops, perhaps 30 degrees elevation from my position, there was an illuminated patch of cloud about the size of my fist held out at arms length. it was immediately followed by another similar phenomenon. there was no set pattern to the lights, although they were loocalized to one region of the cloud. also not that there cloud was not thich, and was rather a thin band stretching north to south. the light moved east to west within the cloud, adn terminated at the trailing edge. after observing for a few minutes, i told my girlfriend who was at this point still on the phone with me. i also noted an apparent correlation between the frequency of the lights and the frequency of the lightning. my girlfriend, who lives about 24 kilometres west of me, went outside and noted similar conditions, i got my mom to come outside and watch too, she was there for the remainder of the time i spent outside. i still need to question her further ont he exact nature of what she saw, but i have confirmed that the thunder head was between her and i. the lights that she saw were moving in a west to east direction, towards the thunder head. the light at my location moved in a general east-west direction, with minimal north-south deviation. any deviation that did exist were sudden, but graceful. almost like rolling a tennisball across a table, then sharply tilting the table. as the cloud cover moved on and revealed clear sky, the lights continued to start in the approx same location, but were still only visible to the trailing edge of the cloud. the time they lasted became shorter, but they increased in frequency. also the lights seemed to move more rapidly just before a very large flash of lightning. there were at times more than one light present, and they seemed to be following the same general path in the sky, almost like they were on a string or road. as the cloud cover moved away, the lights stopped. then as new cloud cover moved in, the lights resumed in about the same location as before. the lights never spanned more than 25-30 degrees of the sky (east-west), and never ventured more than 5-10 degrees north-south. this is a strange phenomenon that i have never witnessed or heard of before, however it may account for some UFO sightings. also note that i had considered the possibility of a commercial spotlite(like the ones used at hollywood gala openings) but ruled that out as my g/f could see it from her house, moving in the opposite direction, and the movement was too erratic. also there did not appear to be any leader from the ground. if anyone can tell me what this is, please e-mail me, as i am very interested to find out. i will also be sending identical copies of this report to the local university(University of Western Ontario), Environment Canada and any other government agencies that may be interested. Nick Hourd September 19, 2002 2323hours Nick Hourd <wonderlandtrip a sympatico.ca> London, ON Canada - Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 20:29:37 (PDT)

A couple of months ago I took my two daughters out to visit my Mother in a near by nursing home. As we got into the car we noticed the tiniest sliver of a moon low in the sky. There was something strange about the way it looked and we commented about it several times on the drive over. It was about 10 pm and we visited NaNa for about 15 minutes then when we had loaded back up to leave my older daughter said, "Wow look at the moon, it's red!" I backed up a bit to get the best view. It was just above the orange trees across the highway. It was definately red! Not orange. Kind of a sparkly transparent red. The kids were very excited at the site and were questioning me about it. I had no explanation. As we stared at it the red faded out starting at each end until it got to the middle point which left a single red dot. After about 15 seconds the remaining red dot dissappeared. I could not find anyone else who witnessed this and am looking for an explanation. Any helpful info appreciated. Carol Hutchinson <gcjh46 a webtv.net> Avon Park, FL USA - Wednesday, September 18, 2002 at 21:22:30 (PDT)

For twenty years I lived on a hillside overlooking Henderson Bay on Puget Sound very near an earthquake faultline. A few summers ago I witnessed a sailboat mast hitting a power line when the boat came too close to shore near a restaurant. The explosion and light were distinctive. Last year this area was hit by the rather large Nisqually Quake. A few days after the quake, on a clear, windless, still night I witnessed the same kind of popping explosion when lightning struck on the bay. This time it was at night. the first incident happened in the broad daylight. I was standing in nearly the same spot on my deck overlooking the bay both times. When the second explosion happened in the night, I thought immediately that a boat had hit a line or electrical source, but there could be not wires in the area of the explosion. There was just the explosion, the bolt of lightning and then absolute quiet again. I was awakened in the night by search helicopters shining lights on the water. I learned in the morning that two teenagers were missing on the water. They had gone out in an aluminum canoe. They found the bodies of the kids several days later and then the boat that was dented very badly. I believe those kids in that aluminum canoe were struck by lightening or electric power that had been generated by the quake. There could be no other explanation. Only one other person (to my knowledge) has come forward with the same sighting. Henderson Bay is fairly large with no commercial structures or industry. There was not a cloud in the sky or any storms of any kind before or after the lightening strike. Weird, eh? Pat Wiggins Port Hadlock, WA USA - Thursday, October 17, 2002 at 00:51:31 (PDT)

One time when I went on vacation to Florida I saw weird wheather. There were clouds that were kind of low to the ground. Not that low, but lower than usual. And they were all sorts of colors like blue and green and there was some lighting moving across them that was also weird colors. This was in Disney World. I tried to show my parents, but they were too interested in the show that we were watching. matt Orlando, Fl USA - Wednesday, October 02, 2002 at 13:24:29 (PDT)

I visited my cousin in new mexico this year. Because it was clear out, we looked at the stars. I noticed what looked like a shooting star, but it was larger and lit up the mountainside, and just disappeared. Has anyone else seen something like this E.J. oswego, il USA - Monday, August 26, 2002 at 07:25:35 (PDT)

Having lived in the lighting capitol of the world (FL) most of my life, I thought I've seen all that there is to see when it comes to strange weather patterns, rain, lighting, etc. I had never heard of St. Elmos Fire until I witnessed it and was later told what it was. On 4th of July weekend, some friends and I got together for an evening boating trip in the Gulf of Mexico. Like I have done a zillion times in the past. The sky was full of clouds along shore and the storm started following us. When it started raining, we went down to the cabin for a while. When we came back out, somebody heard a hissing noise. We narrowed it down to an antenna that had its wires completely snipped and was non working. About the same time, the guys noticed that us gals hair was standing up. We all held our arms up in the air and it felt like static electricity. Then we paid closer attention to the antenna and the tip of it was glowing blue. The blue that you would see in a buttaine lighter or a welding gun. It was amazing!!! Of course we made jokes of what year it might be upon our return to land. Debbie USA - Thursday, July 11, 2002 at 18:14:08 (PDT)

I was watching a thunderstorm one day in August in '94 when I went away from the picture window to get a drink. The lightning at that time was striking pretty close; as I came back into the room, drink in hand, there was a bang from outside with a sizzling sound from the wires in the wall, and the TV (which was off) flashed white and an arc flew out from the edge of the screen into a baseboard heater. Afterwards the screen glowed with odd purple rings on it for about 30 seconds, before we noticed smoke coming out of the TV. It had started a fire; the TV was completely ruined. I know this isn't really a strange coincidence, but I would like to know why the TV Screen arced, rather than the coil at the end of the tube just vaporizing (which I did once to an older TV). If anyone can tell me please do. Joseph Simen <derkrakhaus a hotmail com> NJ USA - Thursday, April 18, 2002 at 14:26:50 (PDT)

This is certainly odd. Or, at least where I live. Imagine this: In the middle of the sky is the sun. Now to the left and right at equal spacing are rainbow "splotches". Now, imagine that there is a half-circle of a rainbow almost connecting to the two splotches around the upper part of the sun. Finally, imagine that further above the half-circle is another rainbow that is almost a half-circle. Now you should see what I saw. 2 rainbow "splotches", and 2 rainbow half-circles. Mabye not the wierdest thing, but it sure was intresting. [ Search for info about "sundogs" or "sun dogs". - billb] Andrew <etjohnny a aol com> Dallas, Tx USA - Wednesday, April 03, 2002 at 15:18:39 (PST)

While kayaking my girlfriend and I observed a transluscent hexagonal 'grid' across the sky at sunset over Puget Sound. Anyone familiar with this? Have researched extensively with no findings. CS <CollinRS629 a hotmail com> USA - Tuesday, March 12, 2002 at 04:43:49 (PST)

Rings of St. Elmo's Fire... This goes back a few years - into the mid sixties, in fact. I was living with my parents in my grandparent's home in Massachusetts. The house sat right across the street from a beach in the town of Hingham on the south end of Boston Harbor. An important thing to note about what I'm about to report is the we found out many years later that the ground system for the electrical distribution system in the house was very poor at the time - probably just short of nonexistant. The soil is very sandy and salty, so the original grounding rod and cable that my grandfather had installed when the house was built in the late fifties had just corroded away. Near the beginning of a strong summer thunderstorm, just before the electricity went out and the lightning and thunder became very intense, my mother and I both witnessed concentric blue/violet rings eminating from nearly every electrical outlet in the house. What it lookd like was this - imagine looking straight on at a standard duplex household electrical outlet. Now imagine, superimposed over each outlet (both top and bottom) a series of concentric rings, like a shooting target, starting from a point source centered roughly over the divider between the two slots in the face of each outlet. The point source in the center would slowly expand to make a ring which would grow while a new point source appeared to take it's place. Overall, there may have been a total of 8 to 10 rings, one outside the other, with the outer-most ones measuring perhaps 3 to 4 inches in diameter. The two sets of rings from the two outlets would sort of merge with each other, creating rings overlapping rings. At the outmost edge of the sets of rings, the largest ones would simply fade to a point where you couldn't see them anymore. The whole time it took for the rings to go from point source to ring and move all the way to the outside a disappear may have taken 2-3 seconds. The rings were evenly spaced, about 1/4" apart and each ring was maybe a little larger than the space between the rings. Overall, the phenomenon lasted about 3 minutes or so, until the lights went out. This being the height of the cold war, my mother was convinced that the Russians were attacking, so we were hussled into the basement before I could touch the rings - something I was had been trying to do before my mother yelled at me not to do that and yanked me away from the wall. Given the weather at the time and the poor condition of the electrical grounding system in the house, I am certain now, looking back on this, that what we saw was St. Elmo's Fire - but I wonder now whether it was somehow being modulated by the 60 Hz electrical current on the lines. All of it vanished when the storm knocked the power out, and I never again saw it happen, even though we lived in that house for another ten years and I looked at those outlets every single time we had a thunderstorm. Later, Ed Ed Williams <edwardewilliams a earthlink.net> Portland, OR USA - Saturday, December 22, 2001 at 12:45:27 (PST)

Once, I was standing outside of my home watching dark clouds spread over our house. We were under the first of the millions of severe thunderstorm warnings of that day. My younger brother Damien and I were sitting on the porch. We were counting how many miles away the thunderstorm was. Damien calculated 13; I calculated 10. I checked with the weather channel, and they said 15 miles. Then I went outside with Damien as the first few ligtining strikes came into view. Being Damien's older sister, I told him to go inside the house. He started to go in, but then the freakiest crap happened. My hair stood on end! It only went up when lightining struck, but I didn't think it was normal. Any opinions? Heather Shaffer <heather9582 a AOL coM> USA - Saturday, March 02, 2002 at 14:30:55 (PST)

I have seen damage done to a tree on my friends property that may have occured during a storm but does not resemble lightning damage. The tree, one of the tallest in this section of woods had two lines gouged out of it on opposite sides of the tree. The lines are about 4-6 inches wide and appeared about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch deep. They went from the base of the tree,and strangely there was no disturbance to the stones or ground upward as far as could be seen from the ground. The other strange thing about this is that the lines appear on opposite sides of the tree as though a large ice tongs was scrapped down the entire length of the tree. Adding to this is the fact that there is no sign of heat damage or burning as one would expect in a lightning strike. I have pictures that I took shortly after this happened and have just recently returned and inspected the tree. It of course is now dead but still standing. The lines are clearly visible and as unexplainable as ever. I not being a scientist theorized that perhaps it was ball lightning for the damage was unlike what I would imagine lightning damage to resemble. I could not for the life of me figure out the two lines opposite as though the tree in fact split a lightning bolt, and yet no burn signs. I'm sure my friend would welcome an explanation and allow close inspection of said tree. Feel free to contact me in regards to an explanation or to arrange an on site examination. Thanks for any light (PUN INTENDED)you may shine on said phenom. Chuck Calcese <lunakid a earthlink.net> Trenton, NJ USA - Friday, March 01, 2002 at 18:29:50 (PST)

I note that a few other people have seen this. It must be a rare thing, because I was with a group of meteorologists and they weren't sure what to make of it. I was staying at the Air Traffic Control training institute (TCTI then NCTI) on the St. Lawrence in Cornwall, Ontario, and we had a mighty storm. I was up on the third floor looking out the windows at the seaway with a group of other people (some of whom were the aformentioned weather experts). We were getting quite a pounding with rain and lightning, but nothing too close, until three lightning strikes hit not too far away in succession, striking what we remembered was a metal tower on a tree lined island partway across the seaway. The strikes spanned about 5 or 6 seconds, and after the second strike we could see a green glow emanating from the general area of impact. As of the third strike, the actual point of impact was glowing a *very* bright green, while the cloud of green haze brightened and continued to expand. After that the glowing point faded but the haze did so more slowly, expanding and dissipating in the storm. There was much wonder and excited talk among the meteorologists but I couldn't get an answer as to what it was we had seen. R. <randal_on_the_road a hotmail com> Vancouver, BC Canada - Thursday, May 02, 2002 at 16:08:21 (PDT)

i saw a cloud, or maybe i should say a rainbow,it was a rainbow cloud? i have looked on internet and can't find a name for what i saw. was it a rainbow in the cloud, there was no arc just a cloud shape made up of the colours of the rainbow. can anyone put me out of my frustration at trying to find the correct scientific term for this phenomenon? karen beard < karenfbeard a aol com> walton-on-thames, england - Monday, May 28, 2001 at 14:13:47 (PDT)

I had gone out to watch a thunderstorm and was standing on a bridge looking down some railway tracks. A bolt of lightning came down in front of me (probably a mile or so away) and almost intantly there was a strong green(ish) glow/flare up from the ground. I don't know what was in the area that was hit but the glow looked more like a special effect from a film than anything I'd expected to see in real life! Anyone know what could have caused this? Paul < paul-uf a newn.cam.ac.uk> Cambridge, UK - Friday, May 11, 2001 at 04:52:07 (PDT)

During an exercise the Marines were conducting at a normal area called sight 50 about 45 miles from the MCAS in Yuma, a strange glow was seen in the sky. At about 0430, myself and several other Marines noticed a ribbon of purplegreen light. It was off in the distance but was about a good two miles long from where we where standing. I made comment about it, but someone said it was probably rocket full from a test missle. I cannot image something like that lasting until dawn, then it disappeared with the morning light from the rising sun. I have never seen it again until watch ing a show on the Northern Lights. It looked just like that, except it was only a ribbon, not the whole sky. It was beautiful, and to my knowledge nothing in the area was unusual after seeing it. This occured in Oct of 1995. Richard Pearce < rpwoofie a excite com> Yuma, AZ USA - Monday, April 16, 2001 at 20:35:27 (PDT)

Strange Lightning sounds - normally one hears a "crack" that falls in pitch, or rumbling. At about 11pm Saturday 8th July, High Wycombe, England a storm was approaching - no rain yet. Lightning flashes started (beyond trees, not visble to me) but noise rather like a large gun or firework. Bursts of say 5 - 15 flashes at about 2 per second, with sounds following less than 0.5 sec after each flash. I fell asleep when it started raining... Stephen Lawrence < s a lawrence.newnet.co.uk> Cambridge, England - Monday, July 09, 2001 at 07:03:40 (PDT)

In 1991 0r '92 I was at my grandfathers ranch in the east foothills. We were out on the porch at dusk, I noticed a whiteish line in the sky, I first thought it must be a long contrail from a plane or even a long thin cloud ? It seemed far to low to be a contrail . Later that evening after dark it was still there, it had not disappated. I thought that it even had a very slight glow to it (this may have been my imagination however) I realized it was paralleling the Calaveras earthquake fault line. The line was not directly over the fault. My grandparents house is about 200 feet from the faultline. There is some type of luminous energy released by the rocks or earth. There were no earthquakes of note in the immediatly following days or weeks. chuck < cmjeron a yahoo com> san jose, ca USA - Monday, April 30, 2001 at 21:34:18 (PDT)

RAIN FROM A CLOUDLESS BLUE SKY Yesterday morning, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2000, at 11:15 a.m. I was walking in Baltimore's Herring Run Park. It was a beautiful morning, bright blue sky without a cloud in it. Along the trail, I encountered an area of about 5 feet by 10 feet where rain was falling, not hard, but surely and steadily, from a bright blue sky. I was in a partially wooded area, and a stream was nearby, but neither of these factors suggested any clue as to why. A family stood there with me, as amazed as I was, and we tried to figure out an explanation and agreed that it couldn't be from any trees. Today, Monday, Oct. 24, 2000, has the same kind of weather. It was at 3 p.m. today, that I took this same walk through the park, and at this same 5' by 10' spot, once again it was raining once again from a blue cloudless sky. Otherwise, we've had no rain in days around here. Can anyone explain? Jake <jake a denzer com> Baltimore, MD USA - Monday, October 23, 2000 at 13:16:57 (PDT)

I just read the report by Gordon he put on a few months ago. I was up visiting my friends while that were at works because we were planning on going out that night. The weather was kind of cold, but not unbearable. Off the the northwest I could see a front moving through, and it showed up overhead in about an hour. We all walked outside to leave and saw the clouds. The leading edge was solid black, and it had just passed us. The interesting part was trailing the leading edge. Several dozen giant holes in the clouds. Through them we could see the cloud layers above. They were huge and very beautiful. After watching them for several minutes wee noticed that some were getting bigger, they seemed to be doing this by slowly sucking their own edges upwards towards the middle of each hole. I wanted to run in and buy a camera, but I didn't want to leave the sight. I hope this is of value and interest. Bob Lusian <lyffyr a yahoo com> Hastings, MN USA - Tuesday, September 26, 2000 at 13:11:13 (PDT)

June 1998-We, my wife and I witnessed what we thought might be heat lightning or some electrical phenomenon. While sitting in our house our lights started to dim - get brighter then dim. This occured for about 30 seconds or so. There was a hum evident and I thought the transformer across from our house was shorting out. We stepped outside at about 7:30 - 8:00 in the evening and saw a most amazing sight. There were clouds, very low and they were lit up with all kind of colors. Orange and pink and green and blue. The colors seem to hang in the clouds and slowly moved from the south to the north were the light show ended in what appeared to be a sort of lightning strike, a blue flash. The incident was witnessed by our neighbor as well. Was this ball lightning or some atmospheric phenomenon? Ray Marsh <Diveray a aol com> Apopka, FL USA - Saturday, December 30, 2000 at 18:33:21 (PST)

This month (Dec 2000) I was outside giving my dogs their dinner when I was looking up at the sky and saw a purple flash filling a part of the sky. It looked as if like lightning had just striked but I saw no actual lightning strike, just purple filling a part of the sky. It was even weirder when I was waiting for thunder after the strike, but I never heard it. It happened again later that night except it looked closer, like right in my face. Anyways a while after that there was an electrical storm. I dunno why I saw no strike or didn't hear any thunder. It's just weird. J. O. Sydney, NSW Australia - Tuesday, December 12, 2000 at 23:35:30 (PST)

it was 1995 or 96 happend a while ago i was on my way with my mom driving home from a Taekwondo lesson...it wa a very still night a little humid but no different from a usual summer night.When out of nowhere a large flash apeared in the sky it was so bright that me and mom instantly jumped up a little and looked up...from what i saw i could make out a blue light ball.it could have been large or small it seemed to be about 100 meter up or more..it went stright over head and seemed to shoot off in to the night sky(upward)..i got no idea what it was, well i have some ideas of what it could be but most people would dismiss me as a nuta...Ugene Ugene Todd <toddkin a hotmail com> Adelaide, south australia Australia - Saturday, January 27, 2001 at 21:22:14 (PST)

In the mid-afternoon of a day in October or November of 2000, while travelling westbound on I-44 beside southwest Springfield, I observed a rather large, lone, circular, thick, high altitude cloud, with a flat bottom and slightly rounded top, to the WSW in an otherwise clear blue sky. Sort of cumulous-like, but at the altitude of an altus cloud. It was about 1/3rd high as wide, and had two sinking "edges" on its sides, like one sometimes sees when a cumulonimbus anvils out at the top and the outer parts appear to be sheering off and sinking back down. I wondered if this cloud maybe was over the Doppler radar unit at the NOAA site near the Springfield-Branson regional airport, but it seemed to be farther west than the location area of the unit. Or that maybe it was evidence of some HAARP experiment. It was the only cloud in the sky. Earlier in the year, in the summer, on one day about 6pm, in a sky with lots of scattered cumulonimbus clouds/thunderstorm cells in the area, but particularly to the west, I observed a very interesting rainbow effect, on the northwest side of Republic, Missouri, as one very tall and narrow cumulonimbus was blocking out the sun beginning to set directly behind it. There was a thin, darker, bluish shadow all around the top of the cloud, and above it was a "bubble" of color that started out a crisp, translucent "hispid buttercup" yellow with tinges of red, orange, green, and violet. The color proportions swirled and changed over time (with the latter two dominating near the end), as well as the shape of the bubble. It was beautiful. I was in the Casey's parking lot, which is near a busy intersection. It appeared no one else had noticed it. Not many people look up. What else do I and others miss not looking up? I praised the Lord for another beauty of creation. This experience lends credence to what I had always thought was an actual experience, though no one else remembers it. At the age of 5 outside my great grandma's home west of Conway, Missouri, while we resumed work on a rock garden, our family watched all the clouds overhead in the whole sky turning various rainbow colors, after a thunderstorm had passed through and many ragged clouds were left behind. I remember all different colors, over the whole sky directly overhead, like being directly under a broad, flat, rainbow. After all these years I thought that maybe it had just been a dream. A few years ago there was a "cold air funnel" over Ozark, Missouri. I was driving in the city at the time, and noticed people looking up at something. I looked up and saw a broad short funnel, but had to keep my mind on the driving, and the funnel was behind a sign while I sat at a stoplight. I kind of forgot it somehow, or dismissed it. It was a non-thunderstorm day, in a non-tornado part of the year. I forgot all about it until a friend at church mentioned seeing it. Funny how some things you are not used to seeing can be "dismissed" by your mind because it does not register. What else do we see and the mind doesn't recognize, and dismisses? John <Johnnyozarks a aol com> Springfield, MO USA - Sunday, January 21, 2001 at 22:20:47 (PST)

On the NJ Turnpike, on July 14, 1985, we were on our way home during a thunderstorm. I never actually saw the "ball" or any lightning for that matter. What I did see were sparks shooting out of the trunk fo a tree beside the turnpike for about three seconds, then the top third of the tree broke off and fell to the ground. There was never any flash, nor any thunder. Bryan Doe <misterdoe a yahoo.coom> New York, NY USA - Tuesday, December 05, 2000 at 10:50:41 (PST)

I too noticed Pool Devils for several occasions during my stay at a hotel in Georgia. These were very early in the morning and the water could not have been heated up to cause a temperature differential as others have suggested. Also the whirls that were causing the "v" shaped wakes were also running up and along the pool walls, sometimes they would race across the surface of the water and stop, whirl for some time and then dart off at incredable speeds and run down the pool walls. Surely these cannot be micro tornadoes or dust devils. That would be true at the surface of the water but how do you explain the running down into the water or along the walls? I believe these are more the result of large scale atomic anomalies of which the science community needs to investigate and explain. Surely there is something strange going on. Nicolas Rios <nrrios a yahoo com> Savannah, GA USA - Friday, January 26, 2001 at 13:54:37 (PST)

I don't know how "weird" this is, because dust devils are common in this area, but I saw one the other day that became quite spectacular. The sky was absolutely cloudless, and temps were around 101 F. We had winds from the ssw around 20 mph from the remains of TS Beryl. I think the winds at the base of the rotation came close to 50 mph, and there was a definite hissing/roaring sound associated with it. It started in the street about 100 feet from my house and came towards us. As it hit the yard, it picked a whole pile of dry leaves up and the entire funnel was filled with them.. It was spectacular to say the least - a column of swirling leaves about 100-120 yards high and dancing like a weird puppet.. It continued like that for 20-30 more feet and dissipated, raining leaves over a few square blocks. Wish I had brought my video camera outside that day... amy <enig99 a home com> Ft Worth , TX USA - Thursday, August 17, 2000 at 11:14:38 (PDT)

Hi there, Several years ago a strange weather event happened to me while fishing with my cousin. We've always wondered what could have caused this phenomona and what this type of weather event is commonly referred to. It was a bright sunny afternoon, with only a few sporatic clouds in the sky. The temperature was around 25 to 30 degrees celcius and there was not even a slight breeze. We were fishing in a very small bay on the Salmon River near Arden, in Eastern Ontario. Our boat was anchored at one end of the boat about 60 feet from shore and we were enjoying a lazy mid summer afternoon. All of a sudden we could here quite a loud racket amongst the cattails and bushes close to shore. It sounded as if at first it was some kind of animal splashing around in the shallows, but then we saw lilly pads that were between us and the cattails start flipping right over and somewhat up off the surface of the water. We then thought it was a fish, beaver, or muskrat swimming close to the surface, until with a quick burst of speed it headed straight for our boat in a wiggly path across the top of the water causing small ripples as it went along. All of a sudden a huge gust of wind knocked off my ballcap & spun the boat around a couple of times before leaving us just as quick as it had arrived. We watched as the ripples on the surface of the water sped down the river and accross a point of land where the leaves on the large trees in that particular spot were rustled and shaken quite forcefully. Then, in an instant, it was gone and all was back to normal as if nothing had occurred at all. Once again this whole incident lasted maybe 20 or 30 seconds and the sky up above was always the same with the sun shining and hardly a cloud to be found. WHAT WAS THIS??? Mark Mitchell <mmitchel a city.hamilton.on.ca> Hamilton, ON Canada - Tuesday, October 24, 2000 at 09:52:33 (PDT)

10/9/00 last night there was an amazing display of heat lightning in a cluster of clouds here in the mountains 70 miles east of san diego...we are at 4,500 ft or so. IT TOTALLY LIT UP THE SKY FOR OVER AN HOUR! flashing on and off and it had some regular lightning bolts in the display but the thing was there was no sound at all, no thunder..the whole display was about 3-4 miles i guess from us...the rest of the entire sky was clear with stars and moon shining...just this collection of clouds that kept ligting up in various ways for such a loooooooooong time it went on and on....most amazing...anyone know about this? Aumakua Ra <mzumerryka a aol com> boulevard, CA USA - Tuesday, October 10, 2000 at 10:10:57 (PDT)

I guess this is explainable but it was so strange that I just have to give this report. About ten years ago I was with a group of women having lunch in a restraunt in Atlanta. The room had large windows on both sides. As we were eating lunch one of the girls said, "Look, it's raining." Facing her, I glaced at the window behind her and saw that the sun was shining. We were all amazed, as well as others in that small restraunt, that we were sitting on the fine line between a heavy rain and beautiful sunshine. If anything, this doesn't happen to too many people, so I would call it an unusual happening with weather. Ida <sjack a ellijay com> ellijay, ga USA - Wednesday, November 01, 2000 at 13:22:38 (PST)

Fall, of 1990 , October, cloudy, approximately 1000 pm, sitting on my deck facing due south, at 1 o'clock position, what I can best describe "talking lightning" first flashing left then right, lightning bolts going back and forth, no thunder, stayed in the same position until after midnight, never have seen anything similar, any comments ??????? Guy Cybulski <gveegee a aol com> Lancaster, ny USA - Saturday, July 15, 2000 at 13:02:20 (PDT)

Tuesday, July 25th 9pm. A coworker and I were just looking out of our 4th floor office windows, because a tornado warning had just been issued for the area. My coworker, John, said, "Hey look someone is flying a kite over there" As the object moved closer we realized it was actually a large branch, about 6-9 feet in length. The ODD thing was it wasn't blowing through the air and tumbling around as one might suspect, instead it was slowly floating through the air as if someone was carrying it. It was quite weird to see. What would cause objects to float by in the air so slowly without tumbling the object (At all)? Mark Seelye <mseelye a yahoo com> Eden Prairie, MN USA - Tuesday, July 25, 2000 at 19:50:50 (PDT)

This happened to me in the summer ( August, I think) of 1978, while I was stationed aboard the USS Sam Rayburn, SSBN 635, undergoing overhaul at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, NH. I had just purchased a new (78) Trans Am, and a friend and myself were out driving around one evening enjoying the car, etc. My friend was driving, and I was in the right seat. It was about 9PM and we were driving north along hwy 236, somewhere around Berwick Maine, when I noticed out of the T-top window what looked like the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). I told Matt (my friend) to find a dark place to pull off (this was in the country anyway) and he found a dirt road and pulled off the main hwy about 50-100 yards into a fairly large clearing about the size of a couple of football fields. Once stopped, we both got out and started to look at the Northern Lights. Neither of us had ever seen them before. As I stood still watching, the wavy sheet of light that we had been looking at, suddenly changed. What follows is what I saw. The sheet of wavy light disappeared, suddenly, just to my left (I believe I was facing north) a beam of bright yellow light appeared from the horizon and traveled straight up until it terminated directly over my head. This beam of light "stayed on", and, had sharp defined edges. As I continued to look at this beam, just to the left of the yellow beam, there appeared a red beam, same width, only red. Same sharp defined edges. It too traveled straight up and terminated over myhead. Completely amazed at what I was looking at, there appeared to the left of the red beam, "pulses" of red light that came up from the horizon, and also terminated directly over my head. These pulses continued as if being "shot" from some kind of gun. As I began to slowly turn to the left to further observe all of this, beams and pulses just kept appearing from the horizon and traveled to directly over my head. The beams and pulses were red, yellow and green, (each a different color). As I slowly turned to my left, these light beams and pulses formed a complete 360 degree circle around me. I made a complete 360 degree turn (very slowly) and when I returned to my original position (north) the first beam (yellow) was still there, as were all of the beams and pulses. Standing there almost numb, I asked Matt if he was seeing what I was seeing, he said "yes". I didn?t say anything else to him at that point. I then looked straight up directly over my head, and all of the beams and pulses were merging together into a slow moving rotation (ccw, I think). The middle of the rotating swirl was clear, and I could see some stars there. The swirl was directly over my head. We stayed and watched this amazing sight for about fifteen minutes, and then Matt wanted to leave. I could have stayed all night. I never discussed this with Matt after that, leading me to believe that all he saw was the Northern Lights, and didn?t see what I saw. I told a few friends in the following days, even checked the papers to see if anyone else had seen the same thing, nothing. It was visible for at least fifteen minutes, and encompassed the whole 360 degrees of the earth, yet nobody else saw it. I (at the time) was stationed aboard a nuclear submarine, and was deemed quite fit and psychologically sound. After getting back into the car and driving off, once back out on the main road, I looked up and saw what I had originally seen, the Northern Lights, only. Any one want to hazard an explanation, you can email me at dennisdeveckx a email com Dennis Deveckx <dennisdeveckx a email com> USA - Tuesday, July 25, 2000 at 07:31:32 (PDT)

I don't think this report concerns "ball" lightning per se' but a different sort than I had ever seen. We had some unusally heavy rain the weekend of July 15th & 16th, 2000. As much as 12" in some areas. This was accompanied by violent thunderstorms and some marble sized hail. The evening before the big rains, however, there was the most spectaular lightning storm I have ever seen. It was sprinkling if raining at all, and the clouds were very high. Based on the relative (audio) volume made by the lightning, they must have been several miles up, but thick and in various layers. A large hole kept appearing in one spot of the lower clouds, through which the uppers layers could be seen when illuminated from within. There was a constant rumble and occasional crackle from above like a freight train on a wooden bridge. There were gigantic cloud to cloud streamers miles in length, jumping from one cloud to another like a network of power stations, and continuous discharges of smaller bolts shooting off the edges of the clouds. In general, the activity seemed fairly static (no pun intended) but punctuated by gigantic flashes, followed by a very low frequency thunder which sounded just like the solid "boom" of a cannon or mortal shell. It did not rumble on or crackle like a big bolt. I was looking up at one point and I saw one of these "lightning bombs" go off. It definately started at a single point and expanded in a cicular (spherical?) shape. It most resembeled a bomb blast or firework shell. It was instantaneous, but I was looking straight at it. The lightning was constant enough that you could have read by the light, and this continuned for a good half hour. There were two or three of the big "bombs" though. Guy Harrison <gharriso a isd.net> Minneapolis, mn USA - Thursday, July 13, 2000 at 00:14:16 (PDT)

hi there i am from england i noticed a strange thing a few days back out of this black cloud there was a big tube with a roar a bit like a train or a waterfall coming from it . it extended to the ground then vanished appeared again could this have been a tornado? david hindmarsh <wtdhchaser a btinternet com> newcastle, nd england - Saturday, May 27, 2000 at 05:30:00 (PDT)

In Feb '00 I observed a very strange double rainbow from the 12th story of a building in Mtn View CA. It was strange because the rainbows were not concentric as they usually are. Unfortunately, I could not see the sun from where I was, but it was near sunset, and it had been raining on and off all day. Both rainbows covered about 45 degrees or so, and almost touched as they approached the vertical, forming a "V" shape. My Theory: An unusually bright sun-dog or "mock sun" formed the second rainbow. Does anyone know if sun-dogs ever get bright enough to cause rainbows? Are the angles correct? (i.e.: 2x rainbow radius ~ distance from sun-dog to sun?) Phil S <pscovis a academic com> Mtn View, CA USA - Thursday, March 23, 2000 at 16:56:58 (PST)

October 30 1998 late or maybe the 31st early morning, aspen colorado, I saw a green lazer light with lightning speed racing towards the ground. The light appeared to have a white leader light. what was that? jan anderson <jlaloulou> st paul , mn USA - Saturday, February 26, 2000 at 23:16:30 (PST)

This was witnessed by many people here, and even made the news. There was an intense and isolated updraft in some clouds that later turned into thunderstorms. It was a vertical cloud column that rose upwards very fast. I would say the phenomenon lasted maybe 1 hour but it looked JUST LIKE a hydrogen bomb explosion! (at least in my opinion, I've never seen an ACTUAL h-bomb though...) When it hit high altitude it billowed out in a giant mushroom shape miles across. What made it so striking was that there were few clouds around it. It quickly dissipated but was fun to watch. Steve Savage <savagesteve13 a yahoo com> oklahoma city, OK USA - Friday, March 17, 2000 at 13:30:24 (PST)

back in the early 80s my dad & i saw something that to this very day hasn't been explained to me. after a severe tstorm in roanoke va, it had cleared off quickly, but we noticed a red rectangular "blotch" in the sky.it just hung there,did NOT move,it was see-thru. as i said,the sun was out & ol'blotch just hung there. i think we were too far south for the aurora. if anyone knows this phenom qr where i can find out,please email susan c <stikeforce a webtv.net> norfolk, va USA - Thursday, September 02, 1999 at 22:26:46 (PDT)

On or about May 20th of this year, at approximately 10:50pm, I was sitting on my back porch (in Plano, Texas) looking at the west-northwest horizon and I saw, what looked to be about five or eight miles away, what was either a UFO, ball lightning, or something else I can't explain. It initially looked like it might have been a flock of white birds (egrets or something, which are fairly common here, and the image I'm describing is well known to me having seen may of such flocks) with wings flapping, causing the "flock" to look like portions of it were blinking on and off in kind of a white-ish hazy cluster that looked like it was about 7 inches long, from my viewing angle. As it got closer it looked like a kind of gas plasma with bits of it blinking on and off, although it was still shapeless, it hung together and traveled slowly towards the north-northeast. I watched it and decided that if it got closer and appeared on the other side of a tree that was beginning to block my view of it, I would run through the gate and down to the alley to get a little closer and view its travel more unobscured towards the other horizon. As I watched it, it suddenly stopped and hung in the air for a few seconds and then it broke apart into five or six sub-groups that quickly traced a kind of wagon-wheel like pattern in the sky. What is interesting is that this exact area had, for several nights, been having a grand-opening or something right below it and there had been three or four spotlights tracing what appeared to me to be that exact pattern in the night sky. It seemed to me that this thing was almost able to sense that these light paths had been carved in the sky several nights earlier and now this thing was kind of responding to it and tracing that pattern back to us. In any event, the object then just as quickly rejoined itself as one gas, plasma type of object, and began moving on in its original direction, kind of haphazardly and randomly north-northeast. It now assume the shape of kind of like the front edge of a comet, looking like a round object was pushing it forward from the middle and parts of this glowing gasous object were arced in a kind of crescent in front on the leading edge. At this point it was passing through some low hanging clouds about a mile or so away (or so it seemed), so the object appeared to be kind of back-lit and kept the clouds glowing around it, although I could clearly see the amorphous shape. I watched this, mystified, and wishing I had my camera, as it moved on towards the northeast horizon. I can't explain what I saw any better than this. I captured this immediately thereafter with some notes (I don't have them here as I type, or I would pinpoint the date exactly)and diagrams, and I developed a theory as to what I saw, because it seemed to me that this object was not so much moving as much as was had kind of passed through a "bad-spot" in the athmosphere, a kind of anomoly or aberation that was kind of like a bad spot on a VCR tape. I have told this story to my freinds and family, and they seem like they believe me, or want to believe me, but I must admit, It sounds whacky. Others have related stories to me of unexplained stuff they've seen, but no one else I've spoken with has ever seen anything like this. I thought about calling someone to report what I saw, but didn't because, first of all, who would I call, and second, they would think I was nuts. I didn't see anything in the papers or hear any stories on the news about any strange sightings in the night sky, but lets just say, although I was sipping some Homebrew, I know what I saw. My e-mail may be changing soon, as Cybernet has been acquired by Internet America, and I'm writing from work (and have been burned by giving that address out with tons of junk mail), so I don't really expect any feedback from you readers. Sorry for making this so long. Peter W. <lweide01 a cybernet com> Plano, TX USA - Thursday, July 01, 1999 at 10:38:34 (PDT)

I was flying from Eindhoven to Amsterdam one cloudy day. We were flying above the cloud cover in the sunlight. The shadow of the airplane was clearly visible on the clouds below. There was a hallow of bright light surrounding the airplane. When questioned the pilot and flight crew could not explain the phenomenom and said they had mever witnessed anything like it previously. Somehow the reflective surface of the plane was bending and intensifying the sunlight into a hallo around the shadow. Chris Chris Canning <kwartz a wxs.nl> Eindhoven, the Netherlands - Sunday, May 09, 1999 at 09:38:06 (PDT)

It was in the 60's living in DesMoines Iowa my cusion came over to stay all night, we were in my bedroom on the second floor of our house and my parents, aunt and uncle were sitting on the front porch below when they hollered up to our open window and told us to look out. We rushed to the window to see a oval shadow right above the clouds not the usuall dark shadow, there were two distinct colors blue and red turning in opposite directions. I try to explain this by telling people to place there hands side by side and pretend one hand is flourecent blue and the other is flourecent red then move them back and fourth you know like a turbine My uncle spoke it's not a plane or helicopter it's standing still and there was no noise or hum like you hear from a blimp Maybe it's govermental experiment said my dad, then it rose straight up in the air and disapeared that was weird we still don't know what it was but one thing we know, it was some kind of U.F.O. Oz ozzie morrow <AHzWIZERD2 a aol com> L.A., Ca. USA - Thursday, April 29, 1999 at 19:30:38 (PDT)

When I was nine years old, I encountered a sheet lightning that zigzag horizontally about five feet off the ground, no more than five feet from me. The sheet was flat, 10 to 15 feet wide and half a foot thick, solid in form with square corners, bright bluish white light. It travelled with a whishing sound, in a manner of a telescoping rod, whishing from side to side, about 20 feet at a time, decreasing in width, until it ended to a point 200 yards down the road. I didn't think much of it for and thought of it as normal emanation for lightning. But over the years, I couldn't find any referrence for this type of lighting. Does anybody? Willie Terrado <willie a terrado com> Irvine, CA USA - Monday, March 08, 1999 at 15:03:35 (PST)

About five or more years ago I was relaxing on my bed listening to music, when I heard thunder outside. This caught my attention because living on the north coast of california you don't see much lightning muchless hear any thunder. It was storming outside and I figured if its an electrical storm, I better play it safe and turn off my stereo--electrical storms have a way of sriking power lines which can find their way into the house circuit and damage any connected to the outlet. Anyway, just as I looked up and reached over to turn my stereo off, I noticed and came in contact with an eary blue halo around the stereo, which gave me a powerful shock and cause my hand to ach and tingle for about an hour afterward. I've been shocked many a time by the normal 120 ac voltage going through house circuits, I use to shock myself just for the hell of it, but this shock was strange it wasn't a continuous tingling sensation that you feel from a house circuit after a few seconds jolt. This was a zap, I didn't have time to feel any distinct feelings, except for afterward. I am a physics student and I know saint elmo's fire can't shock you and nor can an electrical field of some kind in mid air shock you. And a corona discharge of somekind can't shock you, you have to be touching the lead terminals of a high voltage circuit to get shocked--such as a kirlian photography device. What I think happened was that lightning struck a powerline nearby and tried to ground through the house circuit, to which my stereo was hooked up to. How there was a blue light around my stereo and most of all, how I got shocked by this light or whatever still continues to puzzle me. I do know that I am one of those electrical people that effect radios, getted zapped constantly and occationally blow out more than one light bulb at once. If anyone out there with more of an electrical or physics background has an explanation, I'd be glad to here it. Darren Wright <dew1 a axe.humboldt.edu> Arcata, CA USA - Thursday, February 11, 1999 at 22:25:32 (PST)

It was spring, 1977 and my brother had just gotten home from university. We were sitting outside enjoying the nice weather and full moon. To the east of our house about five miles is Logansport. Suddenly, without any kind of noise or change in the ambient light, a large dome of pearlescant light seemed to billow up from the ground. As it hung in the air, several pastel colored lights blinked on and off inside the dome. After a few seconds, it 'deflated' and disappeared. I looked in the newspaper to see if anyone else had reported seeing it, but there was nothing ever reported. Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? Richard Caudle <richard a cqc com> Logansport, IN USA - Saturday, September 05, 1998 at 21:21:58 (PDT)

well a couple of weeks ago i got back from a late night of debauchery and as i pulled into the driveway i noticed a light in the sky. living directly under a major skyway i simply thought "airplane" it was a nice night so as i got out of the car i looked up at the stars and again at the... airplane it was a solid light when i was in the car not blinking or anything and i had only glanced at it. now it was blinking and looked like an airplane. perhaps aliens on board forgot to turn on their visual detection countermeasures... or maby im just paranoid :) chris estes <fox a netunlimited.net> pfafftown, nc USA - Friday, January 30, 1998 at 17:14:40 (PST)

Had you had any reports of sightings of St. Elmo's Fire associated with the cloud cover from Tropical Storm Earl? (Am I the only one that saw this?) I don't even know if it was st elmo's fire, but it looked like this: an entire portion of the sky glowed (just like lightning) except that the glow was prolonged and it varied in intensity (like a light bulb during a power surge) and it was accompanied by a loud hum whose volume was proportional to the brightness of the glow. Also it changed colors: from an eerie blue to orange to pink! I saw this in the Columbia, SC area around 10 pm last night (sep 3, 1998). Curious, Michael Dowd michael dowd <dowd a math.sc.edu> Cola., SC USA - Friday, September 04, 1998 at 13:56:40 (PDT)

While driving through early morning fog, near Window Rock Arizona, several years back I entered an area where the fog had cleared. I drove briefly into the cleared area, it was a circular area perhaps a mile and a half in diameter and the fog that encircled the area was about 100 feet thick. The conditons were odd and as I mentioned it was early morning and the sun was rising behind me. I noticed the oddest thing, off to either side in front of me was were faint columns of faintly glowing white light that extended only as far as the fog layer, at first I considered that driving through the night had dimmed my wits but the image persisted. I looked in the rearview mirror and could see the sun as an enormous diffuse ball, at this point I stopped the car and all of a sudden it dawned on me (yes it was a pun) that the shafts of light were approximately 30 degrees to the left and right which suggested a rainbow. A white rainbow?, impossible! Was it impossible? I had no instruments to take any measurments, damned digital watches aren't worth a damn for estimating degrees, so I held my hand at arms length and wiggled fingers to see how wide the diffuse sun was and it totaled three fingers wide. I later checked this angle and determined it to be 8 to 10 degrees. The only reasonable explanation I could think of was the white light from the sun was being diffracted in the normal way and forming normal rainbows, however due to the wide diffusion pattern of the Sun there were mutiple rainbows from multiple source p oints and overlapping and recombining to reform white light. The only unreasonable explanation I could think of as I viewed this vision as I drove through the Hopi Indian Reservation with the soft chanting of the original inhabitants of this area wafting from the radio is that I have been given an opportunity to pause and really look at the magic that is provided us. RANDY BORNHORST <HANDY1951 a AOL coM> PORTLAND, OR USA - Friday, January 02, 1998 at 00:06:00 (PST)

In the early1960's I was living in Los Altos, Ca. I had a detached workshop behind my house with a concrete area between the house and the shop. On one particular Saturday I was working out in the shop and a light but steady rain was falling with no wi nd. My wife called me at noon to come in for some lunch. On my way to the house I observed that there was a 3 foot diameter circle of perfectly dry cement surrounded by very wet cement. Puzzeled, I stood there for a while waiting to see raindrops landing in the circle but none did even though it was still raining all around it. I ate lunch and when I came out of the house again the dry spot was still there and it was still raining. I was curious but I was also afraid of it. I remembered reading in one of those "Strange but True" books about a man that dissappeared into thin air in an open field, in view of his whole family and the only clue they could find to his dissappearance was perfect circle in the grass where nothing would grow. The man was never seen again. I lived in that house for four years and never witnessed that phenomenon again. Has anyone else seen anything like that or have any explanation? Lee Louden <leelouden@webtv.net> Felton, Ca USA - Friday, October 10, 1997 at 17:04:58 (PDT)

This happened in the winter of 1995/1996. After midnight i and some frieds left my house on a small island in the atlantic ocean, on the northern foot of an old extinct volcano (3000 foot high). The sky was closed with an, for that region typical, thick cloud layer. But over us that cloud layer had an opening, exactly circular with an sharp edge, like puncht out. In the exact middle off that circle stud the (full)moon and the diameter of the circ le was about 20 times of the diameter of the moon. Inside the circle the sky was absolutly clear, we coud see every star like in an realy cloud free night. It seems like the moon would burn a hole in the clouds. While the next 30 minutes the border of that circle got more and more unsharp an stripes of light appears from south over the hill. It seems like northern light (i shaw it often in north canada) but we are on e geographic position of 39'55 north. By telephone i woke up a friend who live on the south side of that hill to go out and see that phenomenon, but next day he told me that he could see nothing. Has anybody seen an appearance like this of have an idea what it was? (Sorry about my english writing, but i am not experienced in that) Michael Hoffmann <michhoff a rocketmail com> Frankfurt, Germany - Friday, October 10, 1997 at 06:07:32 (PDT)

Growth of ice columns in lawn. One morning at work (Feb 97) someone mentioned that I should take a look at an interesting weather phenomenon on the lawn. Sure enough, I found that several of the remenants of mole hills were covered with a strange ice formation in the form of a close-packed bundle of clear ice rods. Each rod was a couple of inches long, and the tip of each rod supported a small stone. The rods were for the most part transparent, and the entire population of rods had a white-colored band half way along their length, forming a white stripe horizontally across the collection of rods. There was frost on the grass. When I checked them again a day later, the rods were 4 to 5 inches long, and two white stripes were now apparent on each. The white stripes probably mark regions of slow growth occuring once per day. Also, many of the rods along the sides of each bundle were curved outwards, as if the ice rods had become soft and fell over, or more likely, as if play-dough hair was being extruded from the earth. Each rod was not a solid like an icicle, but had a complicated crossection, and would shatter into smaller rods when squeezed. There was no snow on the ground, and I believe that the weather had been rainy and above freezing temperature several days before. The rods were growing only on the mole hills and not on the grass- covered dirt. Also, the mole hills were located 1 to 3 feet from a covered concrete walkway which might have given shade, reflected ground heat, etc. I was not able to see enough evidence to decide whether the rods were extruded from below, or whether moisture was somehow deposited on their tips (or perhaps conducted up to the tips from below through hollow channels in the ice?) Bill Beaty Seattle, WA USA - Saturday, September 13, 1997 at 11:23:14 (PDT)

This happened in 1996. About 2200 hours I went outside my house in SE London to smoke a cigarette. While sitting on my front step I glanced skyward and noticed a very straight portion of cloud above my head; it was so straight that it immediately attracted my attention but I thought at first it must be part of an aircraft trail. I glanced up again a few moments later and saw that the "edge" of cloud was now more pronounced than ever and I watched it carefully. As I watched a "tube" of cloud formed in front of my eyes over the space of some minutes. I still thought it must be some kind of horizontal vortex caused by an aircraft but walking to the side of my house and beyond a tree which obscured the view I saw to my astonishment that the tube forked into two and just before it forked it curved slightly. The forked ends were both "tubular" in appearance and where they were backlit by the moon appeared dark and solid. There was no noise or sign of any low flying aircraft at any time while I was outside my house; it was impossible for me to estimate the size of the tube but it must have been a minimum of twenty feet thick and not less than 5/600 yards long including the forked ends. I estimated the height of this "cloud" as between 300 and 1000 feet but it was very difficult to estimate. It was certainly lower than some higher cloud which I could see moving above it. Despite the presence of a breeze the cloud did not move or break up (in fact quite the reverse - it formed into a dead straight solid tube despite the slight breeze)and persisted for many minutes. t.p.whitehorn <t.p.whitehorn a gre.ac.uk> London, - Wednesday, April 23, 1997 at 08:21:48 (PDT)

"interesting weather" circa 1982 I was flying in a Navy P-3C patrol bomber about 700 miles west of San Francisco at 2am, returning from an Antisubmarine Warfare patrol. We had to fly through a line of thunderstorms- it was too long to fly around; too high to fly over; so we picked out what looked like a thin spot on the radar. As we penetrated the clouds, the flight station called me up to take a look at some St. Elmos' fire. I saw the flight station windows each had five or six solid thin lines of blue fire, "crawling" slowly over the exterior. On closer examination, the lines were connected at the base of the windshield wipers. They looked like some electric child had placed his hands on our windows! The propellors were bright, shining discs of blue light with blue sparks trailing back from them. We must have been quite a sight from outside the aircraft. Shortly afterward we were struck by lightning, which temporarily flash blinded the pilots, fried some of our equipment, blew a fist sized hole in the radome at the front of the plane and the last two feet of the MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detector, for finding submarines) boom off the aft portion of the plane. We woke up the third pilot, put out the fires and landed several hours later without further incident. A pretty "interesting" mission. patrick gorman <pgorman a erols com> waldorf, MD USA - Tuesday, March 11, 1997 at 14:46:43 (PST)

On 2/20/97 I was traveling north on I-45 10 miles out of Galveston Texas about6p.m.. The was a storm front on it's way but at the time only a few sprinkles and no lightning.A strange phenomena occured. There was a glow behind the clouds at about 9 o-clock on the horizon. The entire sky seem to move,sort of like a glitch on a tv screen ,there was a force that pushed the car a little and seemed to pass through me. At first I dismissed it as my imagination. I asked my friend who was driving if he saw it. When he told he did but dismissed it as his imagination I knew it was real. It was the strangest experiance either of us ever had . What was even stranger is that it wasn't more upsetting. The whole world moved for a second and it wasn't all that big a deal to us. My only guess is that it was weather related,some freak kind of lightning phenomena. If any one else has ever seen this let me know. Forrest Charnock <charnock a io com> Alvin, Tx USA - Thursday, February 20, 1997 at 17:55:11 (PST) Although misunderstood, boiling water will actually freeze quicker than cold water in temperatures below -40F. As noted by the photo at: http://climate.gi.alaska edu/Curtis/me1.jpg a half gallon of water terms to ice fog instantly at -45F. When water is allowed to evaporate quickly, it will freeze faster. A cup of cold water will still freeze faster and hot water if it stays in the cup. While this is strange and confusing, I thought my photo would be interesting nonetheless. Jan Curtis < jcurtis a alaska.net> Fairbanks, AK USA - Thursday, February 13, 1997 at 14:34:02 (PST)

Am having to use a highschool system, so no e-mail. 541-384-3907 Past 4 yrs have studied quakes,emf,weather etc.etc..... constructed simple device (cost $5.00) that defies laws of physics. As a result came up with complete new theory of earth structure. Been verifibly predicting earthquakes for past four years and explaining terrestial and astronomical phenomenon to scores. Here is tid bit... Earthquakes follow low pressure systems that cross earthquake zones by 3 to 5 days and are relitive. The stones in death valley ca. known as the devils racetrack is explained by this theory. THe Emf, gravity, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces are generated by the same thing. other relitive aspects include, volcanoes, hurricanes, Siberian crater event, animal migration, aurora borealis, sun spots, sun quakes, moon quakes and volcano history, and why do clouds travel eastward instead of west? For more info call or write. PS when you see a strong low pressure system on the satellite pictures offered on the local news look for the center of the storm. When the center of the storm crosses a subduction zone or other earthquake zone predict a quake for 3 to 5 days later. have fun.....see yaa... wayne havins condon, or USA - Wednesday, December 11, 1996 at 14:05:29 (PST)

every night in watsonville ca there is some kind of supersonic boom or the sound of a jet roaring across the sky at around 21:27 if you live in the area please E mail me and let me Know if you hear the same thing jamil nelson <eman1 a cabrillo.campus.mci.net> watsonville, ca USA - Friday, October 25, 1996 at 23:26:17 (PDT)

I was in P.E. class and I noteced something out if the ordanary, there was a large silvery object just above the horrizon it looked about 1/2 mile away. I showed my friends Eric Baron, Maurice Shaw and Armondo "lepercon". all four of us were looking at this object and suddenly it dissapeared in a streak of white headig in our general directionand about a second we all heard a shreeking loud supersonic boom and saw nothing except disrupted clouds from where the "UFO" was. jamil nelson <eman1 a cabrillo.campus.mci.net> watsonville, ca USA - Friday, October 25, 1996 at 23:18:31 (PDT)

One monday morning I opened the freezer at work and discovered that many of the ice cubes had spikes growing from their centers! Every single cube had a small pyramid, and some had pointed spikes about 3cm tall and 1cm dia. at the base. None of them were vertical, all leaned about 45deg. I've heard that this happens only when the icecube trays are cooled very slowly. This was the case in this instance, since the fridge was turned off and aired out on the previous friday. The water filled icecube trays were placed in a room-temp freezer which was then turned on. Also, the bubble patterns in the cubes showed that a water-filled pocket must have existed within each cube, with a "chimney" leading up the neck of the spike. I suspect that the cubes froze from the bottom and sides, rather than from the top down as they usually do. I've seen reports that this phenomenon happens outdoors in the winter, and sometimes a bucket of water will have an "ice spine" mysteriously projecting from its frozen surface. William J. Beaty Seattle, Wa USA - Thursday, September 19, 1996 at 15:09:29 (PDT)

Spiral lightning One summer during an electrical storm in the mid 1970's in Calgary, Alberta, Canada my younger brother and I witnessed an unusual electrical discharge while watching lighting from our livingroom window. We both saw an electrical discharge lasting several (2-4) seconds shaped as a spiral and rotating at a few tens of rpm's like a pinwheel. It was at about a forty five degree angle from the ground and didn't strike anything. I would estimate that it was several hundred meters away and had an angular size of a baseball held at arms length. Electrical storms are fairly common in Calgary, but tornados are not, although they do occur occasionally. It may have been vortex-shaped seen from one end, and therefore looked like a spiral to us. I have only found mention of spiral lightning in one book on lightning, and it was just one sentence. If you know anything of this phenomenon please let me know. Eric Rehwald <erehwald a ycs.ab.ca> Jasper, AB Canada - Wednesday, January 01, 1997 at 14:19:48 (PST)

In 1991 while at work in a building to the south of the river Thames in London I saw from a fourth floor window a double rainbow.The lowest rainbow "ended" in a yard about 150 metres away to my left and I could see its other end terminating a similar distance away. Between the two rainbows the sky was very dark; a deep purplish black like the colour of the sky during an intense rainstorm but the day was a relatively light one. I opened the window to make sure that the effect was not caused by the glass. No difference at all. The effect was weird; a curtain of darkness hanging in the sky between the two arcs very much darker than the sky over the top of the upper rainbow. Paul Whitehorn <t.p.whitehorn a gr.ac.uk> London, UK - Friday, November 01, 1996 at 02:12:33 (PST)

This report is not one describing an inexplicable phenomenon, but at the time it happened it seemed quite weird. I was hiking in the high mountains of Summit County, CO, in Chihuahua gulch, which is on the western side of the two Summit Cty Fourteeners (Greys and Torres Peaks, both over 14k feet). Base elevation was around 11000ft at the beginning of my hike. It was mid-February, air temperature was around 20-25 deg F, sunny, clear skies, tons of deep (6 or more feet) snow. My buddy and I began ascending an especially steep mountain that had had many of its trees burned off in a fire a few years ago. The summit of this mountain was around 13000ft. The hike took most of the morning (hard work snowshoe-ing a 30 degree unshielded deep face at that altitude). Around 2:00pm we had reached the false summit, which was only a couple hundred feet below the real summit. After I nearly fell to my death (details of that if you want it) we stopped and admired the awesome splendor of our vista. At that time we noticed the wind picking up, which caught our attention (always want to avoid ground strikes at altitude), and since it hadn't been a windy day, we began scanning the sky for incoming weather. At that point, perhaps 1900 feet above the valley floor, we noticed a truly truly massive.. snow devil. Only one I'd ever seen (to this day). It must have been easily 1000feet wide with visible activity from the valley floor to well above our heads. I'd estimate the thing was perhaps 3500-4000 feet in total height. What amazed us about this phenomenon was that while the air column was clearly rotating, the inner core consisted of snow blowing (rocketing) straight into the air. The sun was shining very brightly and I was able to clearly see this. My buddy and I began to get scared, as it seemed high altitude winds were pushing the snow devil up and over towards the false summit of the mountain we were on. We scrambled for shelter (not that much available above treeline), and watched it arrive. What was particularly weird was that it was completely silent, except as it approached, and we could hear the wind howling on the surface of the snow. We caught the edge of it, or rather it caught us with the rotating edge and instantly we were in a fierce driving wind with stinging snow particles (no clouds throughout the entire thing). I have no idea what kind of wind speeds we're talking about, suffice it to say I was glad I wasn't standing. I'd have to estimate 30-40mph, at a minimum. The upward moving inner air/snow column didn't make it to us (probably not enough superficially heated snow surface that far up the mountain to power that thing). It retreated down the mountain (still huge, still intense) and then quietly, silently dissapated. I have seen small snow devils before, even some reaching as high as 20ft when the snow is dusty and the air is very cold and the sun if bright, but never in my life had I felt the force of a snow devil that was half as wide and taller than a mountain. We got down off the mountain pretty quick after that. Brian Gorski <bgorski a computerland.net> Columbia, MO USA - Monday, October 07, 1996 at 12:21:51 (PDT)

In August 1994 I was driving north on I-5 between Lynnwood and Everett WA, when I noticed a large circular hole in the clouds to my left. The sky was covered with filmy high stuff (cirrostratus?), and the edge of the hole was extremely circular. I pulled over to get a better look. The hole was huge, maybe 60 degrees across, with the center maybe 60 degrees from overhead to the west. If the cloud layer was miles high, then the hole was miles wide. The edge of the hole appeared to curl upwards, as if the hole was punched from below. In the center of the hole was a small opaque puff of white cloud maybe 1/5 the diameter of the hole. This puff had a cone-shaped trail behind it as if it were rising and leaving part of itself behind. The entire pattern was moving north, so I continued driving to work and found that I could see it approaching Eaton Inc. buildings. I checked on its progress over the next four hours. The sharp circular edge became ragged, and by the time the hole had passed over to the north it no longer appeared unusual. The original hole was not a *complete* circle. The filmy cloud layer abutted a thicker region having a fairly straight edge, and part of the hole would have extended into the thick region, but the hole-making effect appeared not to affect the thicker cloud layer. The overall pattern was of a perfectly circular hole with a flat side taking up about 1/3 of the perimeter. What could cause such a phenomena? It was so huge that I wouldn't think it could be man-made. High-power radar beamed upwards? Gaseous remnants of a micro-comet impacting the atmosphere? Or have the hoaxers started making "cloud circles" instead of crop circles? bill USA - Friday, September 27, 1996 at 18:22:49 (PDT)

On 10 July 1972, at Gramsville, NY, I witnessed an intense thunderstorm with continuous lightning from about 9:30PM to 11PM. As the storm began to quiet down, a cone shape light extended a few degrees above the horizon for a few seconds a few miles away. The next day, the area was was found to have experienced a small tornado. What was seen the night before may have been electrical lines flashing in the vortex (funnel). Jan Curtis <jcurtis a alaska.net> Fairbanks, AK USA - Tuesday, September 24, 1996 at 21:54:32 (PDT)

LOW ATMOSPHERIC FLASH OUT OF NOWHERE-- My girlfriend and I were camping at Rachel Lake, in the cascade mountains, above a large waterfall. As we were going to sleep in the pup tent, I noticed a flash of light outside, bright enought that I thought someone had taken a picture. I looked outside and startled a deer standing there. Hmmm. Obviously no people around, or that deer wouldn't be there. After about ten minutes another flash. This time I was watching. It seemed a bit like heat lightning, completely silent, in the very light fog around us, but I have never heard of it mentioned under these conditions before. I would guess that the waterfall was carrying electrons downward, and that they occasionally snapped back all at once, releasing photons everywhere. Gary Hawkins <ghawk a eskimo com> Seattle, WA USA - Thursday, September 19, 1996 at 20:27:34 (PDT)

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