I had spent half an hour taking nondescript, distant CG (cloud-to-ground) lightning pictures in the Osage Hills. The location was almost surrounded by thunderstorms, whose anvils had aggregated together and become increasingly charged. Then, a sudden explosion of cloud-to-air and cloud-to-cloud filaments filled the sky–including directly overhead! This photo thru a 50-mm lens shows only a small fraction of that barrage. Of course, I left that hilltop vantage immediately! Filaments of lightning many miles long sometimes erupt under anvil canopies, occasionally (but not always) connected to CGs. Storm observers call them “anvil crawlers” because of the relatively slow way some of them spread outward from their source.
12 W Bartlesville OK (20 Jun 87) Looking SSparking Sky
I had spent half an hour taking nondescript, distant CG (cloud-to-ground) lightning pictures in the Osage Hills. The location was almost surrounded by thunderstorms, whose anvils had aggregated together and become increasingly charged. Then, a sudden explosion of cloud-to-air and cloud-to-cloud filaments filled the sky–including directly overhead! This photo thru a 50-mm lens shows only a small fraction of that barrage. Of course, I left that hilltop vantage immediately! Filaments of lightning many miles long sometimes erupt under anvil canopies, occasionally (but not always) connected to CGs. Storm observers call them “anvil crawlers” because of the relatively slow way some of them spread outward from their source.
12 W Bartlesville OK (20 Jun 87) Looking S