Thunderstorms impacted northern Illinois on the evening of July 5, 2022, producing heavy rainfall and isolated wind damage. The storms were loosely organized in a northwest-to-southeast line along a front in a good CAPE/marginal shear environment. Like most other storms this time of year, they were mostly "uncooperative" (lightning mostly confined to upper part of the cloud) however one isolated cell threw out some nice negative CGs.
The first stroke was not blue, and the lightning in my videos does not change color. I leave the white balance on "auto" and let it do its thing-- usually I like the effect of the color being changed slightly. In this video it gave the first stroke a very dreamy/ethereal effect with the low clouds nearby.
Stroke Information
Flash 1: -13/-10/-5kA, ~4100ft away
Flash 2: -25kA, 2.5mi away (right; lower confidence)
Flash 3: -28kA, 3.7mi (right), -19kA, 4.4mi (left)
Flash 4: -74/-41/-32kA, 5mi away. -13/-5kA strokes were also detected to my right, possibly associated with the downward leaders seen there. It is unclear due to video saturation if those leaders attached to ground.
EQUIPMENT I USE:
Sony CyberShot RX100V
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YI 4K Action Camera
Model YAS. 1616.INT
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Samsung Galaxy S9 Smartphone
Sony Stereo Digital Voice Recorder
Model ICD-UX570
Video editing done using Shotcut
Lightning information provided by Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) through weather.us/lightning. Note that I only use this information to roughly estimate stroke intensity and distance, the data may be prone to error on my end and my work is not, and should not be considered to be, a formal evaluation of the NLDN's performance.
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/