Weather!

[Cape Byron]

I wonder whether the exhaust of a high-power rocket would ionize the air sufficiently to create an easier path for lightning.

Isn't that why Apollo 12 was struck by lightning?

 

[Cape Byron]

What? You don't like sitting under a canopy with metal poles and launch pads with rails and rods in the center of an open field? That is a lot of lightning rods.

We get plenty of strikes here on the ridge. I don't want to be outside under a wet canopy surrounded by lightning rods.

No, Sir. I can think of more enjoyable ways to get hurt.

 

[bobby_hamill]

they don't use any recovery as the rocket is vaporized. I read an paper where they used a metal
Rail Road Caboose to act as a safety ground and the rocket was launched using a air activated switch
so no stray current could enter the caboose

 

[jqavins]

I've felt my hair stand on end -twice- in thunderstorms, both while working at Cedar Point. The first, a lady was yelling at me while standing near the Magnum Roller Coaster and lightning struck the a lightning rod and weather equipment on top of it. The other time was a different season and I was taking shelter in the pump house for one of the pools. I'm not sure what near me was struck (could have been the same roller coaster) but it was loud.

I've heard lightning can strike up to 10 miles from a storm. I suppose if a storm blows up at a launch I'm at, just don't stand next to me and you'll be fine.

One day, with a thunderstorm on the way, I was outside getting some stuff in and my eyes happened to fall on the ground stake our lightning rod was attached to at just the right moment to see a spark jump around the clamp from the wire to the stake. The next day, we were going to take the clamp apart and clean everything up the retighten it, but decided to replace the whole rod and clamp instead.

I've seen footage of a rocket unrolling a spool of wire during its flight, to deliberately cause a lightning strike. I wanna be 20+ miles away from that.

Ions persisting like that, I tend to doubt. But a trail of particulates may serve the same purpose, even if they're not metallic.

I was in California one August a while back and the vendor I was visiting apologized for being late, as I was sitting on the back of the rental van in the parking lot when he pulled up to let me in. He was sincerely, deeply pained at the difficulty he caused me, sitting there for half an hour at 85 deg and the gross humidity (probably 20% or something 'terrible' like that). I didn't have a drop of sweat on me and was enjoying the breeze. Back home it was the typical 95+ deg and 80% humidity. I literally laughed at him and told him to never head East in August if that weather was bad for him.

He probably shouldn't go 30 miles or so north over the San Gabriels, since it was likely 110+ on the other side. Low humidity, sure, but 110+ ferctyinoutloud!

It is amazing what interesting and dynamic weather we have in this country ...

I beg to differ. Our one country, actually just the lower 48, is the size of all of Europe (more or less). Driving from LA the New York City is approximately like driving from Madrid to Moscow. So it's really not amazing at all, imo.

Vid of rocket induced lightning.

In another thread, someone posted a picture of a a rocket used for those experiments. The thing is, it looked like a three or four inches HPR that lots of us might have built.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Spot the airplane...

 

[John Kemker]

I seem to remember Larry Smith from Rocket Science assisting one of the Florida universities with lightning experiments using rockets. Don't know if it was just him selling them the kits/motors or more.

 

[jqavins]

Spot the airplane...

View attachment 571175

That's actually really common, and almost always harmless. What's really cool is how the picture captured a rainbow apparently created by the lightning; it'd be an amazing coincidence if the bolt followed the bow by chance.

 

[Dotini]

That's actually really common, and almost always harmless. What's really cool is how the picture captured a rainbow apparently created by the lightning; it'd be an amazing coincidence if the bolt followed the bow by chance.

I've read a couple of technical books about lightning, but neither addresses the connection between lightning and rainbows, so I researched it a little bit:


Lightning

Both phenomena require raindrops, but they use them in different ways.

Lightning bolts illuminate a pathway from the ground to the sky when negatively charged cloud bottoms connect with positive charges on Earth's surface. "When you get a buildup of negative charge in the bottom of a cloud," which occurs when raindrops pull charges down, "opposites attract," Cerveny told Live Science.


Rainbow

Raindrops may shuttle electrical charges to form lightning, but to form a rainbow, raindrops must scatter sunlight, separating the light into the colors that make up a rainbow.

A rainbow results when the light waves bend, or refract, as they pass through raindrops, Cerveny said. Raindrops act as a glass prism would, bending sunlight and forcing it to reveal the individual colors it contains.

Electrifying Photo Takes Internet by Storm: Why Rainbow Lightning Is So Rare

A real-estate agent and storm chaser captured a snapshot of a lifetime on Aug. 9, when he photographed a rare duo — an eerie flash of lightning framed by a glorious rainbow — in Tucson, Arizona. H

www.livescience.com

Photographer Sue Byrne was taking photos on July 5 when she snapped an incredible combo of a rainbow while lightning was striking from Upham Beach looking over to St Pete Beach

 

[Funkworks]

Lightning hitting a truck, no one injured:



It's one of the first things we learn in electromagnetism that the electric field inside a conducting shell, preferably grounded, is 0. Shown here in a demo:

 

[tsmith1315]

I seem to remember Larry Smith from Rocket Science assisting one of the Florida universities with lightning experiments using rockets. Don't know if it was just him selling them the kits/motors or more.

I remember seeing a program on TV about it. They used spools of wire on the rocket to lead back to the instruments. Maybe on Discovery channel, back when it was educational. Really neat, but I never realized Larry had a connection.

 

[Dotini]

View attachment 571267

We visited the SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention at Bellingham, Washington a few years ago. After a tour, we witnessed one of the owners demonstrate a Tesla coil on stage, very similar to what is seen in your inserted image. In watching and listening to him speak, he seemed to have certain odd mannerisms or tics which suggested to me the man was suffering from some malady of the nervous system. Possibly he has had too many accidents in his museum?

​

 

[OverTheTop]

I visited two museums relating to Tesla during a trip through Croatia a few years back. The Technical Museum Nicola Tesla in Zagreb had a Faraday cage near an enormous tesla coil. I was a bit slow putting my hand up when they asked for volunteers to stand inside the cage. Impressive lightning generated.

There was a smaller tesla coil at the Nicola Tesla Memorial Centre, in his home town of Smiljan, next to his parent's house and his father's church.

Memorijalni centar „Nikola Tesla” Smiljan

Memorijalni centar Nikola Tesla Smiljan je mjesto gdje je veliki genije učinio prve korake prema najvećim dostignućima koji su promijenili čitav svijet.

mcnikolatesla.hr

 

[Funkworks]

… he seemed to have certain odd mannerisms or tics which suggested to me the man was suffering from some malady of the nervous system. Possibly he has had too many accidents in his museum?

That would be a fun story for a fictional character but in my experience, real labs are safe and neurological diseases are most often genetic or endogenous.

 

[cwbullet]

In watching and listening to him speak, he seemed to have certain odd mannerisms or tics which suggested to me the man was suffering from some malady of the nervous system. Possibly he has had too many accidents in his museum?

Possible but unlikely. As said above, this is more likely genetic.

 

[teepot]

A couple of lightning stories. I was on a cinder cone near Mtn Home Idaho when a storm was coming. I was watching it with binoculars. I was lucky enough to see a strike hit the ground. Looked like a bomb went off. Started a fire. I got as low as I could among the rocks as it went over. I was at a golf course with my buddies near Mt Shasta one July. Some of us were sitting on a balcony one night watching a thunder storm coming. Lots of lightning. Eventually all 16 of us were on the balcony watching the lightning filled storm get closer. It was spectacular. Then is was right on top of us. You never saw a bunch of guys get out of chairs and try to go through a sliding glass door as fast as we moved. A couple of bolts hit close enough that the flash and sound was instantaneous. Lite up the place like daylight. I've been on other golf courses when storms were near and have never had my hair stand on end.
Now the local weather. In a word it's NUTS. We are 20 degrees below normal. Should be 70-75 this time of year. Yesterday it made it to 53F. Today it made it to 55F. A few days ago I was mowing the lawn and watching it snow in the mountains. I hope summer doesn't make up for the current low temperatures with a bunch of days of 115F. The amount of rain we have had so far is almost as much as the average 4" of rain for the year. Weeds everywhere. Last time this happened Death Valley was green and full of flowers. The desert around here looks like it is covered in green carpet. Soon to be blooming.

 

[Peartree]

Almost no snow at all this winter, we only shoveled once, and if we hadn't, it would have melted in a day or three.

But we've had a lot of rain. This past week it rained on and off for something like four days, with thunderstorms much earlier in the year than usual, and the ground was nearly saturated before it started. Then Friday we had a wind storm with higher sustained winds and strong gusts than we've had for several years. The combination of saturated soils and high winds had trees down everywhere. We drove over to my brother's house fifteen miles away and detoured two or three times around various downed trees and saw a great many others on cross streets. One of our church folk had their sheet metal shed get blown down like in the story of the Big Bad Wolf and a friend had five trees laying down on three sides of his house (but no damage other than an outside light being pulled off the side of the house).

 

[cwbullet]

Had to cancel Saturday because the entire day (minus 1 hour) has winds at 20 mph with gusts to 25-30mph. One member asked why we can't fly with winds fo 20mph. Hmm.

 

[NateB]

We have 35-45kt gusts predicted for tomorrow. Michiana Rocketry has already postponed Saturday's launch.

 

[techrat]

Since we are all talking about Lightning...., when I was a child, like 10 or 12, I had a dream that I had built a machine to "capture" lighting and bleed it off slowly, so it could be used to power things. I knew that capacitors could hold large charges (as I had already zapped myself a few times by then), so, I constructed a giant capacitor, as big as a building, to hold the charge created by a storm strike. Lighting would strike my tower, feed into the giant Capacitor, and then, via some unspecified part of my dream, we could bleed off the energy into useful power.

It's now over 40 years later, and I assume that some other idiot has had the same idea, does anyone know if there's been any real science in this kind "renewable" energy?

 

[tsmith1315]

I assume that some other idiot has had the same idea

 

[David Schwantz]

Another 10" of snow for tonight

 

[Funkworks]

... does anyone know if there's been any real science in this kind "renewable" energy?

It's ultimately wind energy (atmospheric kinetic energy), so there's no need to wait for thunder strikes. It's much easier to convert wind energy directly into smaller currents, than to wait for it to cause lightning which is harder to manage (if at all).

Lightning - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's also better economically to build something that can be used all year long, rather than something that's only usable during thunderstorms.

 

[Sooner Boomer]

Severe, wide spread fires driven by high winds and low humidity, between OKC and Guthrie to the north. Situation made even worse by prolific Western Red Cedars - little fire bombs.

 

[NateB]

The weather service confirmed an EF2 and 2 EF0 tornadoes our area Friday night. The EF2 touched down about 3 miles from our house and while it did some major damage to homes and buildings, there were no reports of serious injuries. It looks like a similar weather pattern is setting up for Tuesday.

 

[hobie1dog]

Going to be a wet weekend in the Charlotte area, so likely there will be lots of NASCAR fans rained out.

 

[cwbullet]

Yup. A wet Memorial Day weekend.

 

[NateB]

We are setting up for a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. Highs near 80 , lows in the 50s, clear skies and low humidity.

Unfortunately it is my weekend to work AND there are a few other helicopter crews shut down due to staffing. Going to be a long weekend.

 

[Art Upton]

Well here in MN, you know we are the "land of 10,000 lakes". That 's not correct, we are the land of 50,000 mosquito ponds, and when they start to evaporate in summer, humidity is like 99%.

Is it also not "The Land Of SkyBlue Waters?"

 

[hobie1dog]

We are setting up for a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. Highs near 80 , lows in the 50s, clear skies and low humidity.

Unfortunately it is my weekend to work AND there are a few other helicopter crews shut down due to staffing. Going to be a long weekend.

The Indy 500 is also happening up there too.

 

[cwbullet]

Being outside today, where I live, is only good if you are a duck.