Skylapse.org: Upward-directed Lightning

Tom Warner of ztresearch has provided these slow-motion examples of the evolution of upward-directed, tower lightning near Rapid City, SD. Both movies illustrate flashes that were captured by a high-speed camera at an astounding 7,207 frames per second. Regarding the second movie, Tom states: "An upward lightning flash initiated from a TV tower in Rapid City, SD ... the positive polarity leader moves upward and branches into two primary channels. The right channel is weak and develops numerous recoil leaders which try to reionize the decayed branch. At one point the branch sustains growth following a recoil leader connection. The entire video is about 1/2 second."

Purpose

The skylapse.org blog is a collection of video embeds, animated gifs, and other illustrations that reveal atmospheric features that may be normally subtle or elusive in real-time, but come to life when the time-lapse technique is applied. The sole intention of creating the blog was to generate a library of ready-to-use visual atmospheric illustrations for pedagogical purposes. While some of the imagery in the blog is my own, most are derived from video sharing sites and, subsequently, embedded or hyperlinked. Please use the "labels" feature below to quickly find examples of phenomena.