Ball Lightning

This illustration of "ball lightning" appears in the Eyewitness Book, Weather.

The weather has been messy in South Mississippi this past week.  I can’t complain–we needed the rain.  Whenever I’m safely sheltered indoors as the rain pours down outdoors, I’m reminded of the weirdest weather phenomenon I’ve ever experienced.

It was 1987, and I was a new mother spending a typical, albeit stormy, day playing on the living room floor with Adam (Nathan’s oldest brother), an infant at the time.  I had just picked him up to rock him when I heard a loud clap of thunder.  At the same time, an amazing sight–what I can only describe as an electric tumbleweed–burst out of the fireplace and raced across our newly carpeted floor.  It hit the opposite wall and disappeared instantly without leaving a hint of a scorch mark.

As I recall, I ran with baby Adam to the bedroom and stayed there shaking for a while.  When Bryan got home from work that evening, I described the phenomenon to him, but he had never heard of such a thing.

Several years later, I was looking at an “Eyewitness Book” called Weather, and I saw the same illustration attached to this post with the caption:  “Throughout history, many people have reported seeing a strange phenomenon called ball lightning.  In 1773, just after a clap of thunder, two clergy-men saw a tiny, bright ball, no bigger than a football, glow in the fireplace, then burst with a bang.  No one can explain these rare sightings.”

The size of the ball lightning, in my case, was much larger, about the size of an exercise ball.  And it was not a solid glow; it was wildly electric, like a fiery tangle of rolling vines.  Also, it did not linger in the fireplace; it burst out at the sound of the thunderclap and rolled rapidly across the room.  Still, that’s the closest description I’ve seen to what I experienced in Gulfport, Mississippi, back in 1987.

Tags: ball lightning, Gulfport Mississippi, Nathan