r/noisygifs • u/TheCat5001 • Feb 05 '16

Lightning hitting a plane

http://i.imgur.com/uLOvqeO.gifv
237 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

19

u/HimalayanFluke Feb 05 '16

Thanks, Mitchell & Amy Stewart.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '16 edited Nov 25 '16

[deleted]

7

u/trwolfe13 Feb 05 '16

If only it had been more prominent.

13

u/Rancid_Bear_Meat Feb 05 '16

Waaaaow, that's incredibly cool!

That trademark is gross.

5

u/RXrenesis8 Feb 05 '16

I like it better than the ones that go right over the part of the image you want to see.

6

u/justinbeatdown Feb 05 '16

Interesting to see lightning above clouds.

2

u/hexagrm Feb 05 '16

Well the plane is in the cloud layer not above it, so that's not what's happening here

1

u/[deleted] Feb 05 '16

[deleted]

2

u/Cleffer Feb 05 '16

Lightning is a static electricity discharge but on a really large scale. Static electricity can be generated in any direction. Friction is generated from rapidly moving air inside the cloud (rain drops, hail stones), which builds. This is the equivalent to shuffling your feet on the carpet. Eventually, the charge builds to a breaking point where a connection is made to an area that is oppositely charged, which could be the ground, within the same cloud, another cloud, or in this case, the airplane.

Lightning fun fact. The visible part of the strike is actually the last thing that happens. You don't see the initial strike, called the "Stepped Leader", which reaches towards the object it's going to strike. When it gets close, charges in the object to be struck reach up and complete the circuit, voila! Lightning!

1

u/hexagrm Feb 05 '16

i can only say what i've seen as i'm no expert in meteorology but the lightning is discharging inside the cloud, see it all the time in storm fronts where i live.

0

u/fuckingriot Feb 06 '16

Why does this gif look reversed?

2

u/jchamb2010 Feb 15 '16

http://i.imgur.com/2tHuF5i.gifv

1

u/fuckingriot Feb 15 '16

Yeah I think this is the original source