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the glowing, electric cloud

I just got back from vacation in Florida and a highlight was a glowing cloud that came overhead Monday night. We were walking back from one of the St Pete beaches after sunset and one of the approaching clouds was glowing blue. It looked like a normal thunderstorm, other than for that blue glow. Pretty soon we started hearing thunder and there were frequent flashes of lightning inside the cloud and there were a few external lightning bolts per minute. Some of those were huge and one was a capital H reaching from the top of the cloud, with the crosspiece being just beneath the cloud. Throughout that time, the cloud never lost that steady blue glow, except for having localized flashes of cloud lightning. We watched it for a long time and the blue glow eventually faded until the cloud looked like the surrounding anvil clouds and the lightning stopped. Did we stumble onto the set of an alien invasion movie? We didn't see any obvious little green men but, being in Florida, they'd probably blend in. Especially during the earlybird special at a strip mall restaurant. Has anyone seen something like that and, better still, can someone explain that steady blue glow?
 
WTF? I've heard of red clouds and pink clouds but those are at sunset. I have no idea what that could be.
 
its aliens.
 
Sounds like heat lightning we get sometimes.
 
idk ....we got some weird clouds out here with all the polution we have in cali lol
 
I had a similar experience on Wed morning coming home from work just before dawn, only my cloud was orange. Never did rain but it gave me a strange trippy feeling cos I had to drive towards it with no other illumination than a nebulous orange cluster in the sky.

I believe this is what they call "heat lightning", since it was a hot night.
 
i believe the cloud was just a typical "thunderhead" or cumulonimbus cloud.
i lived in florida for 13 years. it was just heat lightning is my guess.
 
  • #10
SK is right about it being a cumulonimbus, but I've never seen one with a steady blue glow. There was thunder to go along with the lightning, so it wasn't heat lightning and, although I'd love to see one of those Noctilucent clouds, this wasn't one of those. I'd understand it if it had been flashing that blue glow, but the steady color has me baffled.
 
  • #11
technically there is no such thing as "heat lightning"..
what people call "heat lightning" is actually just regular lightning viewed from a long way away..

if you are right under a storm, you see regular lightning and hear regular thunder..
if you are 40 miles away from the same storm, you see vague flashes of light off in the distance, you are too far away to hear the thunder, and you call it "heat lightning"..

Scot
 
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