On Oct. 15th, however, pilot Chris Holmes had no place to go when lightning started to crackle in thunderstorms around his aircraft.
“I was flying 35,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico near the Yucatan Peninsula when a super cell started pulsing with light,” he says. “It wasn’t just ordinary lightning, though. The cell was also creating lots of sprites and jets leaping up from the thunderhead.”
I have yet to see the sprites, but a researcher from the local college was one of the discoverers of the gamma ray and x-ray emissions from thunderstorms. Part of the mechanism is the storm creates antimatter, which means they almost act like particle accelerators.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130410082734.htm
Lightning: Gamma Rays, an EMP, and UV Halo; All in < 300 Milliseconds
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/data-from-the-international-space-station-confirms-lightning-is-insane/