MUST WATCH! Rare footage of an extraordinary form of lightning!

Watch the footage that amazed the world of science as bolts of lightning grow upward from the ground and into the sky!

Screencap from a rare footage of an Upward Lighting

Tom A Warner and his colleagues have been capturing lightning with high speed cameras for over the past few years. All in all they have filmed over 776 lightning flashes which happened naturally. The lightnings they have recorded have speeds as high as 100,000 images per second.

Recording at speeds this high allows a detailed examination of what actually happens during lightning strikes.

Over 41 of the lightnings they have captured came from the tall towers of Rapid City.

Tom and his colleagues determined that the upward leader would not happen if the tall object was not at hand.

There are two different types of lightning strikes. They can travel in either direction: cloud-to-ground lightning or ground-to-cloud lightning.  Tom and his colleagues have done a lot of work on upward lightning. Upward lightning has been observed and studied since the 1930s, but there are still a number of unanswered questions regarding this phenomenon.

Unlike cloud-to-ground lightning which usually begins within the thunderstorm, the ground-to-cloud lightning flash starts from tall ground-based things then it will spread upwards into the overlying clouds.

The most significant discovery made about upward lightning is that it mainly happens when there is a nearby positive cloud-to-ground flash.

The electric field change caused by the preceding flash results to an upward positive leader which will initiate from a tall object such as a tower, wind turbine or building. It is the shape of the tall object and the resulting enhancement in the electrical field that makes it potential for an upward leader to form following a nearby flash.

Watch the fascinating high-speed video of the upward lightning shown below and share us your thoughts on the comment section!

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