kerry@ctvax (11/26/85)
While training with the Air Force in southwest Texas, I observed some interesting lightning phenomena. I was flying dual in a T-41 one afternoon, when some really vicious thunderstorms began to pop-up around us. The flight instuctor and I were both getting tired and hot, so we decided to take it easy on the way back to base and do a little "cloud watching". One of these storms had become a real monster and topped out at about 55,000 feet. We were about 25-30 miles away from it with a true airspeed of about 110 kts and an altitude of about 7,000 feet. The static on the radio was incessant and it was difficult to hear the other pilots in the practice area, but most had followed our lead and were heading back to base. The lightning from the base of the huge storm to the ground was dancing almost at 3 flashes per second. Suddenly, there was a flash and we were both blinded for an instant. A lightning discharge had occured above and ahead of us in clear blue sky opposite the billowing white mass of clouds. The radio had grown strangely quite and it was then that we noticed that all the circuit breakers had popped. We quickly reset them and everything was fine. I watched two more of these lightning discharges appear, comfortably, farther away. What was happening was now clear: the lightning was branching out of the storm parallel to the ground for a distance of from 10 to 20 miles! Some time later, I related what I thought was an incredible experience to a meteorologist acquaintance and he said that such an exhibit sometimes happens around big nasty cumulonimbus. He said that some storms could generate so much static electricity that even the air around them for miles could become charged, and when the charge became sufficiently large--whamo! By the way, on the same day this incident occured, a 210 in the same area was forced to make an impromptu landing at a local airport after being peppered by golf ball sized hail.