Whyalla display section

page 3

Have a look at this photo taken in the same storm as the set on the previous page:

Notice the following unusual elements on this photo.

See how there is a radial burst coming from the central lightning bolt.

I have never seen this in lightning before of since.  The lightning on this night was incredibly 'tangled'.  I just wonder if this radial spark and the tangles (see below) may be a precursor to ball lightning.  Maybe ball lightning forms when lightning tangles in on itself, possibly when the air is especially resistive. 

Check out how tangled this lightning is, it even seems to be forming nodules:

There are another type of tangle as well, they are more faint and occur just under the clouds (basically on the cloud air interface), I call them under-cloud creepers.  There is one just above the central bolt in the main picture above. There is also some on the previous page.  Here is a detailed scan of one from the picture on this page- not that it helps much:

There is also the case of the horizontal bolt.  I have examined the original photo carefully and this bolt (which can be clearly seen on the main picture above) doesn't seem to connect to any other bolt on the lefthand extremity.  I can't see it's righthand extremity so I'll never know if it connected to a bolt there, but even if it did you can see that in this picture that it comes so close to the ground it is surprising it didn't connect somewhere there.