That information primarily comes from eyewitness accounts; ball lightning is rare enough that no scientists have ever observed it in the field while they had equipment to measure its properties. At least not until the summer of 2012, when the authors of the new paper were out on the Qinghai Plateau in China during a thunderstorm, taking spectral readings of ordinary cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning.
Just a few minutes before midnight, the researchers’ digital video cameras picked up a ball lightning event ... Read even more
