What is the difference between sheet lightning and fork lightning

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Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Related 0. Hot Network Questions. Question feed. Physics Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled. Their shape has been described as resembling columns, carrots or jellyfish! Blue jets emerge from the top of the thundercloud, extending up in narrow cones fanning out and disappearing at heights of miles.

Blue jets last just a fraction of a second. Elves are rapidly expanding disk-shaped glowing regions that can be up to miles in diameter. They last less than a thousandth of a second, and occur above areas of active CG lightning.

Scientists believe elves result when an energetic electromagnetic pulse extends up into the ionosphere. Anvil Crawlers are tree-like, horizontally-moving IC lightning discharges which tend to appear along the underside of thunderstorm anvils.

They can be seen by the human eye due to their slower speed relative to other lightning! Anvil crawlers are often very high-altitude events, and typically result in soft, rolling thunder due to their great distance from the observer.

Anvil crawlers can either occur independently completely within the cloud, or in connection with a cloud-to-ground discharge. It typically originates in the highest regions of a cumulonimbus cloud, travelling horizontally a good distance away from the thunderstorm before making a vertical descent to earth.

Bead Lightning is the name given to the decaying stage of a lightning channel which cools after a return stroke and its luminosity breaks up into segments. It describes a stage of a normal lightning discharge rather than a type of lightning. Ribbon Lightning occurs in thunderstorms with high cross winds and many return strokes The wind blows each successive return stroke sideways into the previous return stroke causing a ribbon effect Camera movement during the capture of a lightning photograph can also result in the same effect.

Staccato lightning is a CG lightning strike which is a short-duration stroke that often appears as a single very bright flash with considerable branching. And finally, what is ball lightning?! Want to track live lightning strikes across the world? Halloween can be a scary time of year when it comes to the weather. From ghost-grey fogs to howling gales, just about anything is possible. Accurate flood forecasting can save lives and livelihoods. Find out how the team at the Environment Agency produces their river flood forecasts, how to stay safe in a flood and what impact climate change will have.

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