More lightning than usual over the past month?

[Sérénité]

Has anyone else noticed this? Is this caused by some sort of freak weather (or other) phenomena or just a sign of the changing times...?

Over the past few weeks I've lost count of the amount of stories I've heard of people being struck and/or killed by lightening.

I know its not a totally rare thing, but it really always did seem like a case of wrong place at the wrong time. Until this past few weeks...when people are suddenly getting hit left right and centre and lightening storms are suddenly going crazy worldwide.

Europe was hit with a staggering 330,000 lightening strikes in just an 8 hour period on the 8th June. That has to take some record beating?!

https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/lightning-strikes-europe.jpg?w=628&h=410

So I just done a little bit of digging to check out the statistics and there is certainly a very sudden and noticeable uptick in activity...

16th May
Sixty-five people have been killed by lightning strikes in Bangladesh in four days, as the country endures its annual severe storm season. Most of the deaths occurred in rural parts of north and central Bangladesh, with the victims predominantly farmers and construction workers, Reaz Ahmed, director general of Bangladesh’s Department of Disaster Management, told CNN on Monday. The deadliest recent day was Thursday, when 34 people were killed, he said. Twenty-one died the following day, seven on Saturday and three on Sunday.

29th May
One man has died and scores of people been injured, including children, as lightning strikes hit several parts of Europe, including a park in Paris and a football pitch in Germany.

A bolt of lightning killed a man hiking in mountains in south-west Poland on Saturday. Storm lightning injured three others in the same region, and a 61-year-old man drowned in flash flooding.

In Germany, more than 30 people were taken to hospital in the western village of Hoppstädten when lightning struck at the end of a junior football match. Three adults were seriously injured, including the referee who was hit directly and had to be resuscitated before being airlifted to hospital.
Eleven people, including eight children, were injured when lightning struck as they were celebrating a birthday party in a park in north-west Paris. The children, aged between seven and eight years old, took shelter beneath a tree when the storm broke. A hospital spokesman said one child remained in a serious condition.

4th June
Rock am Ring festival near Frankfurt was cancelled after at least 80 people got injure due to lightnings in the area.

7th June
A man and a five-year-old boy are in critical condition after being struck by lightning in Northern Ireland, as severe storms across the UK caused flash floods in some areas.
A seven-year-old girl was also seriously injured during the incident at Lisburn in County Antrim on Tuesday. It is understood the man was collecting his children from Killowen primary school.

8th June
330,000 strikes recorded over the EU during an 8 hour period (No Brexiters where intentionally harmed ;)

14th June
Brian was clearing up after dinner on Sunday evening when the lighting struck his home in Bedford.
He was cutting off a slice of turkey for his cat Emma when the force of the bolt hurled him several metres across the room.
Brian, who landed with the knife still in his hand, said: "It would have been quite ironic for me to have survived being struck by lightning, only to have stabbed myself with a razor sharp carving knife. :ROFL:

17th June
A plane flying from Manchester Airport to Morocco was diverted and forced to land in London when it was struck by lightning.
The Thomson Airways flight took off from Manchester for Agadir at 6.42pm on Thursday afternoon.
But the pilot was soon forced to make an unscheduled landing in London when the Boeing 737-800 suffered a lightning strike.

22nd June
At least 93 people have been killed and more than 20 injured by lightning strikes in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, officials say.
Most of the people who died were working on farms during torrential rains on Tuesday, reports said.

This site shows lightening strikes around the world in realtime:
http://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=sat;r=0;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=0.00;n=0;y=49.4078;x=6.8545;z=5;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;


Are more instances than normal being reported during this past month, or is there a sudden uptick in fatal strikes occuring?

~There has also been numerous reports of 'strange' lightening, coming from cloudless skies...meanwhile locally here this past week we have experienced strange lights in clouds too...

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-lights-ufo-above-manchester-11496868

http://i4.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article11497722.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS93027904.jpg

People living in Tameside and in Gorton claim to have seen a strange phenomenon in the night sky.

Mitesh Tailor, 31, said he was amazed to spot ‘glowing lights’ above Ashton-under-Lyne’s Hartshead Estate on Friday evening.

HR officer Mitesh first spotted the lights from his bedroom window on Friday, which he says have resumed even more brightly on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Intrigued by the phenomenon, Mitesh took photographs of what he saw shortly after midnight on Sunday.

He said: “At first I didn’t think much of it, on Friday I thought it was just normal but last night it was a lot brighter.

“It’s not the moon, that is on the other side of my house. They weren’t artificial lights either, the area is really dark.”

...I can confirm what this man says, after living in that very same area for some years, that part of the sky is very dark. There is very little light pollution over the Hartshead Pike area off towards the moors and if its not the moon I couldn't even begin to explain what it could be.

[Sunny-side-up]

Last night here in south West London was a night of Cloud to Cloud illumination, noticed a few little oddities amungst the light and clouds, but yes strange weather I have been seeing for sometime now!

[BongoBob]

I've been slowly meandering through the States, northwesterly from Texas since the beginning of June, and have seen a ton of lightning storms in the past 23 days, except for pike's national forest in Colorado, which was clear for a few days leading up to the Summer Solstice... Solstice comes, then the storms roll back in, just in time for the full moon rise.

Currently in Wyoming, and the lightning storms have chased me up this way as well. Haven't noticed any strange lights yet, other than a falling star early early in the morning when I got into Wyoming.

Of Course, Texas itself has had some heavy rainfall/thunderstorms the past month as well, which was odd in it's own way due to the extended stretch of drought conditions.

[Althena]

I wish, there's no lightning down here in the Andes, I sure do miss it.

[Wind]

More cosmic rays coming through. Expect more and more lightning storms in the future...

RKnWeYM6MTw

[raff]

If this is Haarp in the UK then their manipulations in the Brexit campaign have been a washout :dancing: :sun:

[Sérénité]

More cosmic rays coming through. Expect more and more lightning storms in the future...

RKnWeYM6MTw

Great video, thanks Wind! This explains it then...so its going to get worse for the next 10 years? :O No wonder our ancestors went underground! :peep:

[Wind]

Unfortunately so. Earth's magnetic field has been decreasing 5 % per decade and that's unheard of. It's our shield, protecting us from the stuff coming out there such as cosmic rays. Increased amounts of cosmic rays are known to have many effects, such as creating lots of cloud covers and electrical phenomenons in the skies, hence the increased flooding and lightning storms. We are just starting to witness these strong powers of nature on a scale which we haven't seen before. Records will continue to be broken.

[Sérénité]

What is causing this to happen Wind? Is it something that happens every so many millenia then corrects itself again?
Are we also at risk of increased CME flare hits too if this is the case?
If the magnetic field is weakening, does that mean a shift in the magnetic poles is an eventuality?
Sorry for so many questions, I notice from your posts over the years know you know a lot on these subjects, so I know you're the right person to ask :)

[Hervé]

Data: 236,000 lightning bolts: Did one strike near you? (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/plus/ct-did-lightning-strike-near-you-htmlstory.html)

By Kori Rumore and Jonathon Berlin



http://www.trbimg.com/img-576d355f/turbine/ct-did-lightning-strike-near-you-001/900/900x506


Wednesday night's storm stretched 700 miles across the Midwest and produced more than 1 million lightning strokes and flashes. (Vaisala)


Wednesday night's storm, which stretched more than 700 miles from eastern Iowa to northern Virginia, produced more than 1 million lightning events over 18 hours -- more than 236,000 of them occurring in Illinois and over Lake Michigan, and is blamed for a house fire (http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/evanston/news/ct-evr-structure-fire-tl-0630-20160623-story.html) in Evanston.

Since 1989, every stroke and flash of lightning that happens in the continental U.S. has been recorded in real time by the Vaisala-owned National Lightning Detection Network (http://www.weather.gov/lot/22June2016_tornadoes), based in Tucson, Ariz., which monitors lightning activity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This includes the time, location and polarity of cloud-to-ground lightning and cloud pulses, which can stay in a cloud or be connected to cloud-to-ground lightning.

Vaisala estimates the Chicago area had 12-20 flashes of lightning (http://www.vaisala.com/VaisalaImages/Lightning/avg_fd_2005-2014_CONUS_2mi_grid.png) per square mile each year from 2005-14. During the same time period, Illinois had the eighth-highest (http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/stats/05-14_Flash_Density_State.pdf) cloud-to-ground lightning flash density among U.S. states at 14.2 per square mile. Florida had the most -- 21 per square mile.

Ron Holle (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-holle-10809a51), a lightning expert and Vaisala meteorologist, said Wednesday night's storm was a derecho. That's a widespread, thunderstorm-induced event (http://chicagoweathercenter.com/blog/ask-tom-what-is-a-derecho) that can cover up to thousands of miles, have windspeeds of up to 100 mph and last for 24 hours or longer. Derecho is the Spanish word for "straight ahead," which refers to its wind direction (as opposed to rotary winds). It was first used as a weather term in 1878 by Iowa meteorologist Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/hinrichs/hinrichs.htm), and appeared in a March 30, 1890, Chicago Tribune article (http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1890/03/30/page/12/article/predictions-of-tornadoes) on tornado prediction.

It's not an uncommon weather phenomenon here, with a double derecho (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-07-02/news/chi-onetwo-punch-chicago-area-hit-by-a-double-derecho-20140702_1_wind-storm-chicago-area-weather-service) reported in 2014, another that covered a 1,400-mile area (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-07-12/news/chi-what-was-that-tom-skilling-explains-what-hit-us-20110712_1_squall-line-derechoes-tom-skilling) in 2011, and one that forced the evacuation of Wrigley Field in 2008. The worst derecho on record in the Chicago area caused $7 million in damage (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-08-23/news/0408230091_1_wgn-derecho-storm) in 1965.

"Derechos occur in summer in various lengths, and often start in Iowa or Illinois in the afternoon, then continue through the night while moving southeast," Holle said in an email.

In addition to lightning, this storm was responsible for rain totals up to 3 inches (http://chicagoweathercenter.com/blog/huge-variations-in-rainfall-chicago-area-wide-and-within-counties) in some parts of northern Illinois and at least eight tornadoes (http://www.weather.gov/lot/22June2016_tornadoes) that swept through (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-weather-severe-thunderstorms-tornado-threat-20160622-story.html) portions of Lee, LaSalle and DeKalb counties and caused a two-hour delay of a Copa America soccer match at Soldier Field, which forced more than 50,000 fans (http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/soccer/ct-copa-america-chile-colombia-spt-0623-20160622-story.html) to leave their seats to seek shelter.

Sources: AISALA's variable rain totals (http://www.vaisala.com/en/products/thunderstormandlightningdetectionsystems/Pages/NLDN.aspx) to northern Illinois and National Lightning Detection Network (http://www.weather.gov/lot/22June2016_tornadoes), National Weather Service (http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/weather/national-weather-service-ORGOV000357-topic.html), WGN-TV chief meteorologist Tom Skilling (http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/weather/tom-skilling-PECLB0017764463-topic.html), Tribune reporting

[ghostrider]

The negative thoughts of earth humans along with A BOMB testing in the 50s damaged the ozone layer which allows more of the suns energy to penatrate the earth's mantle , causing alot of volcanic activity, which causes earthquakes, which causes sinkholes... the weather patterns are altered, and will only get worse and more and more severe....

[Wind]

What is causing this to happen Wind? Is it something that happens every so many millenia then corrects itself again?
Are we also at risk of increased CME flare hits too if this is the case?
If the magnetic field is weakening, does that mean a shift in the magnetic poles is an eventuality?
Sorry for so many questions, I notice from your posts over the years know you know a lot on these subjects, so I know you're the right person to ask :)

Why thank you, Sérénité. :)

All of those are very good questions!

Hopefully these will answer them.

http://magneticreversal.org/

GeaJhDvtZ2Q

[Nick Matkin]

This site looks quite well informed: http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q816.html

And it states that the earth's magnetic field is only declining by 0.07% per year. If it was 5% per decade it would be all gone in about 140 years if you do the maths!!

Actually the earth's magmatic field now is somewhat stronger than it has been over the very long term, although it has been stronger in the past few thousand years.

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/magflip.gif

As most of us know by now the 11year solar cycle also alters the sun's solar wind. We are now on the declining side of cycle 24 which has been of lower intensity than many previous ones. It's speculated that the sun's cycles could be declining as they have before, but will increase again - as they have before.

Since we've only been observing the sun in this way well for a couple of hundred years, we don't really now what its underlying cycles might be.

Nevertheless, we now have a society and a technology that can not only detect these changes, but they could have a detectable effect that would not have been noticed in the more distant past.

There are thousands of serious amateur observers of the earth's magnetic field and ionosphere (using all sorts of highly processed radio signals and detection equipment) and they have released no scare stories...

All this may be relevant regarding the number of lighting strikes (are we counting the more common cloud to cloud, cloud to earth, or both?). But could it not just be due to random seasonal variations?

[Tyy1907]

Has anyone else noticed this? Is this caused by some sort of freak weather (or other) phenomena or just a sign of the changing times...?

Over the past few weeks I've lost count of the amount of stories I've heard of people being struck and/or killed by lightening.

I know its not a totally rare thing, but it really always did seem like a case of wrong place at the wrong time. Until this past few weeks...when people are suddenly getting hit left right and centre and lightening storms are suddenly going crazy worldwide.

Europe was hit with a staggering 330,000 lightening strikes in just an 8 hour period on the 8th June. That has to take some record beating?!

https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/lightning-strikes-europe.jpg?w=628&h=410

So I just done a little bit of digging to check out the statistics and there is certainly a very sudden and noticeable uptick in activity...

16th May
Sixty-five people have been killed by lightning strikes in Bangladesh in four days, as the country endures its annual severe storm season. Most of the deaths occurred in rural parts of north and central Bangladesh, with the victims predominantly farmers and construction workers, Reaz Ahmed, director general of Bangladesh’s Department of Disaster Management, told CNN on Monday. The deadliest recent day was Thursday, when 34 people were killed, he said. Twenty-one died the following day, seven on Saturday and three on Sunday.

29th May
One man has died and scores of people been injured, including children, as lightning strikes hit several parts of Europe, including a park in Paris and a football pitch in Germany.

A bolt of lightning killed a man hiking in mountains in south-west Poland on Saturday. Storm lightning injured three others in the same region, and a 61-year-old man drowned in flash flooding.

In Germany, more than 30 people were taken to hospital in the western village of Hoppstädten when lightning struck at the end of a junior football match. Three adults were seriously injured, including the referee who was hit directly and had to be resuscitated before being airlifted to hospital.
Eleven people, including eight children, were injured when lightning struck as they were celebrating a birthday party in a park in north-west Paris. The children, aged between seven and eight years old, took shelter beneath a tree when the storm broke. A hospital spokesman said one child remained in a serious condition.

4th June
Rock am Ring festival near Frankfurt was cancelled after at least 80 people got injure due to lightnings in the area.

7th June
A man and a five-year-old boy are in critical condition after being struck by lightning in Northern Ireland, as severe storms across the UK caused flash floods in some areas.
A seven-year-old girl was also seriously injured during the incident at Lisburn in County Antrim on Tuesday. It is understood the man was collecting his children from Killowen primary school.

8th June
330,000 strikes recorded over the EU during an 8 hour period (No Brexiters where intentionally harmed ;)

14th June
Brian was clearing up after dinner on Sunday evening when the lighting struck his home in Bedford.
He was cutting off a slice of turkey for his cat Emma when the force of the bolt hurled him several metres across the room.
Brian, who landed with the knife still in his hand, said: "It would have been quite ironic for me to have survived being struck by lightning, only to have stabbed myself with a razor sharp carving knife. :ROFL:

17th June
A plane flying from Manchester Airport to Morocco was diverted and forced to land in London when it was struck by lightning.
The Thomson Airways flight took off from Manchester for Agadir at 6.42pm on Thursday afternoon.
But the pilot was soon forced to make an unscheduled landing in London when the Boeing 737-800 suffered a lightning strike.

22nd June
At least 93 people have been killed and more than 20 injured by lightning strikes in the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, officials say.
Most of the people who died were working on farms during torrential rains on Tuesday, reports said.

This site shows lightening strikes around the world in realtime:
http://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=sat;r=0;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=0.00;n=0;y=49.4078;x=6.8545;z=5;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;


Are more instances than normal being reported during this past month, or is there a sudden uptick in fatal strikes occuring?

~There has also been numerous reports of 'strange' lightening, coming from cloudless skies...meanwhile locally here this past week we have experienced strange lights in clouds too...

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/what-lights-ufo-above-manchester-11496868

http://i4.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article11497722.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS93027904.jpg

People living in Tameside and in Gorton claim to have seen a strange phenomenon in the night sky.

Mitesh Tailor, 31, said he was amazed to spot ‘glowing lights’ above Ashton-under-Lyne’s Hartshead Estate on Friday evening.

HR officer Mitesh first spotted the lights from his bedroom window on Friday, which he says have resumed even more brightly on Saturday and Sunday nights.

Intrigued by the phenomenon, Mitesh took photographs of what he saw shortly after midnight on Sunday.

He said: “At first I didn’t think much of it, on Friday I thought it was just normal but last night it was a lot brighter.

“It’s not the moon, that is on the other side of my house. They weren’t artificial lights either, the area is really dark.”

...I can confirm what this man says, after living in that very same area for some years, that part of the sky is very dark. There is very little light pollution over the Hartshead Pike area off towards the moors and if its not the moon I couldn't even begin to explain what it could be.

I can say here in south central Saskatchewan we've had our share of showers and thunderstorms this year. Nothing excessive but definitely more than previous years

[Tintin]

This is a pretty remarkable photograph and decided here may be the best place to share it :sun: I'm pretty certain it doesn't portend to anything specific but it is imbued with some quite enormous drama - a very evocative and powerful image:

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/2024-04-05_Lightning_strikes_the_Statue_of_Liberty_NYC_%281%29.jpg
https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/2024-04-05_Lightning_strikes_the_Statue_of_Liberty_NYC_%282%29.jpg

Taken yesterday April 5th 2024 and the photographer is a Dan Martland

[Pam]

This is a pretty remarkable photograph and decided here may be the best place to share it :sun: I'm pretty certain it doesn't portend to anything specific but it is imbued with some quite enormous drama - a very evocative and powerful image:

https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/2024-04-05_Lightning_strikes_the_Statue_of_Liberty_NYC_%281%29.jpg
https://avalonlibrary.net/Tintin/2024-04-05_Lightning_strikes_the_Statue_of_Liberty_NYC_%282%29.jpg

Taken yesterday April 5th 2024 and the photographer is a Dan Martland

Great find!!! I am beginning to believe that nothing happens randomly. What a visual for our alleged Lady Liberty. I have the strongest feeling that plasma will be the key ingredient in future events, we will not only be seeing more and more of it, but it will effect everything from the ground up!

Remember the days, not even that horribly long ago when the US was all about "making the world safe for democracy"..... and the majority bought that hook, line and sinker. I am unable to imbed this but it's simply a phote of chain that is apparently attached to Lady Liberties foot. They were gas lighting us before the term even existed.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pLK6rjCn5wA/maxresdefault.jpg
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pLK6rjCn5wA/maxresdefault.jpg