Lightning Slow Motion

Following videos were created with frame-by-frame clips from youtube video Lightning Strike at 103,000 FPS, created by @theslowmoguys. The original video was taken at 28.5K frames per second, or at 35 micro-seconds interval, and plays at 24 frames per second. Even when it is played at 1000 times slower details of lightening can still be easily overlooked.

Each lightening process, from development of stepper, to touching down, to white flash, and after, takes typically about 50 frames. The re-composited video plays each frame for 0.5 seconds, and the touch down frame for 2.0 seconds. With these videos the development of white flash can be seen clearly, and counted in number of frames.

In some of these videos, white flash can be seen growing out from ocean, and in others full length white flash follows right after a stepper. It is clear that the time between stepper and white flash is shorter than the time between frames, and a higher speed camera could be very nice. In “Lightning Slow Motion 8” two incidents of lightning making contact with ocean were captured.

Lightning Slow Motion #1

First lightning video example. White flash had fully developed before next frame, i.e. in less than 35 micro-seconds, and lasted for 6 frames. Hover over clips below to see the process.

Lightning Slow Motion #2

In this second lightning video white flash can be seen developing out of ocean but not quite fully developed.

Greenish blue color is typically seen at the boundary of white flash at developing stage.

Lightning Slow motion #3

In this video last frame of stepper showed brightened end but not yet made full contact with ocean.

Note that some frames during white flash were skipped because maximum persisted longer .

Lightning Slow motion #4

A short white flash.

The ghostly red flash at about 1/3 to the right was explained by authors of video as internal reflection inside the camera.

Frame #024 was skipped because it looked identical to #023.

Lightning Slow motion #5

Another white flash caught just before being fully developed. That greenish blue color is most prominent in this video and lasted much longer.

Again, frame #020 appeared identical to #019 and was skipped.

Lightning Slow motion #8

There are two instances of lightning flash included in the video. In both cases white flashes at their beginning stage were caught coming off ocean surface.