From mostly weak elevated thunderstorms that moved through northern Illinois on April 22. This shows that even poor-quality storms can give you an excellent lightning strike.
The first two strikes were captured with the Sony in 500fps and shown 20x slower, and the last strike was captured with the Yi in 240fps and shown 32x slower. Speaking of the last stroke, an "upward illumination" is a very weak CG lightning stroke where a cutoff section of a downward leader tree makes contact with the ground and the return stroke wave doesn't even make it back into the cloud. No surprise that the NLDN missed that one. It actually did cause a power flash that isn't visible on the camera (very wide lens and heavy rainfall on windshield).
I thought the first stroke had higher peak current (it's not common where thunder actually startles me)... then again it was closer than I thought at only 1/2mi.
The diagonal lines are guy wires from a 500ft tower I was parked next to. I should have been there during the first part as at least one flash (upward or downward) involved it per NLDN data.
EQUIPMENT I USE:
Sony CyberShot RX100V
www.sony.com/electronics/cameras
YI 4K Action Camera
Model YAS. 1616.INT
www.yitechnology.com/
Samsung Galaxy S9 Smartphone
Sony Stereo Digital Voice Recorder
Model ICD-UX570
Video editing: Shotcut and Movie Maker
NLDN data provided by weather.us/lightning
Thanks to Tom A. Warner and other lightning physicists and researchers who have helped me understand lightning processes explained in my videos. Tom has created a great resource for individuals interested in learning how lightning works.
ztresearch.blog/education/