Talk:Ball lightning

An Observation dated 2014 April 21th, Easter Monday 2014
My parents watched in their home the development of what appeared to be an impressive thundercloud. There was no rain yet. My father watched in the direction of the could at the back of the house, my mother watched through a windows in the front of the house in the opposite direction. My mother then saw a ball of orange roll through the street, an estimated one meter in diameter. She described its texture and colour like the sun's granulated surface, as "shown" in fake-colour images. As my mother stood perplexed and the ball rolled out of view my father ducked for cover. He saw an "enormous" orange sphere envelope a forested cemetery, at about one kilometer distance. It took several seconds for the sound of the strike to reach their home.

It is unclear what happened first: the lightning strike at the cemetery or the ball in the street. The distance between the lightning ball and the site of the strike is about one kilometer.

No damage in the street was recorded due to the ball lightning. But the cemetery was devastated by the strike. An oak of about 20 meters was reduced to shreds of wood. The mourning center's back wall, double brick masonry 10 meters long and 3 meters tall, was obliterated and rubble was blown inward. Marble tomb stones got shattered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxAVeI7aF-4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.83.108.100 (talk) 10:33, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Active research
Hi, just a note. I've spoken to someone about this, and it seems a certain very famous writer and artist here actually saw one in the 1800s though didn't describe it as ball shaped. I'm trying to locate the original article but as its going into a scientific paper have to be careful. It does suggest that the ion beam explanation by Lowke may in fact be essentially correct at least in some cases. BL may turn out to be several rather than one phenomenon, for which a "Unified Theory" may be needed that covers all observations and effects including the more outlandish ones. I have done some research here and actually investigated a case that suggested CRT TVs can attract these possibly due to the electrostatic field in the tube itself and around the scan coils. Certainly ion beams extending out into the air can result from HV runaway, and this is actually well documented with military equipment, effects at Fermilab, LEP and LHC as well as anecdotal cases in Russia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.190.166.126 (talk) 07:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)


 * This story was told to me in August 2009 by one of the Cherepovets investigators, who wished to remain anonymous. I will not add anything on my own, so as not to change the original story. Here is the story recorded from his words:
 * "It was at the end of August 2001. Together with my father, I went fishing on Lake Gorodenok, which is located in the forest near our village of Zimnik. The village is located 100 km from Cherepovets towards the city of Ustyuzhny. We went to the lake for the night. Around 23:00 it was already quite dark and my father and I were sitting by the campfire. After a while, we saw a sharp glow. An object in the shape of a white-yellow ball hovered over the middle of the lake. When the object hovered over the water, it was in a calm state without visible fluctuations. The balloon hung above the water for about 5 minutes, then abruptly headed towards the forest and hit a tree. We saw sparks and heard a crack. After hitting a tree, the object abruptly flew away and disappeared from view. The tree caught fire at the same time. Weather conditions: clear, stars were visible.
 * Also, here are some data from the questionnaire of the eyewitness, which were recorded during a more detailed discussion and analysis of this phenomenon:
 * The diameter of the object is ~ 1 meter;
 * The height of the object above the water is ~ 0.5 meters;
 * The eyewitness estimated the distance to the object at 250m;
 * Place of observation south-east side of the lake;
 * Impact on an eyewitness: a state of shock; https://cherepovets-kp.ucoz.org/blog/2009-10-13-18 176.65.113.100 (talk) 19:21, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Is the existence of the phenomenon even confirmed?
I've found no hard evidence of any ball lightning phenomenon ever existing. It seems that it's somewhere between urban legend and hallucination. Please provide some hard evidence of existence of this, otherwise this article should be rephrased to reflect the supposed existence of the phenomenon. BratPit24 (talk) 20:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)


 * There's quite a few documented well documented sightings.
 * Probably a better question would be : Are all the sightings describing the same phenomena? It seems like "Ball lightning" is a catch-all for any freak glowy thing that's associated with lightning in any way.
 * It's not really surprising that lightning occasionally produces unusual sparks, embers, optical illusions, and perhaps even little bubbles of plasma. Heck, even a moth whose wings caught on fire would fit the description. Does "ball lightning" describe all of those things? Or is there one particular thing that is "ball lightning" and some of the sightings are describing something else? ApLundell (talk) 17:31, 15 July 2024 (UTC)