Tower Guy Wires Spark During Lightning Activity

Рет қаралды 1,197

11 ай бұрын

A poorly-organized cluster of thunderstorms moved through northern Illinois late in the afternoon on July 5, 2023. With a modest electrified stratiform region, I camped the WBBM tower in Bloomingdale, IL after the convective line had passed. While there was no upward lightning, the tower made quite a bit of noise after every lightning flash that would occur. Inspecting my video footage revealed that there was sparking along the tower's supporting guy wires, mostly where the uppermost guy wires meet the tower. This happened multiple times, and the clip is from the most prominent example.
EQUIPMENT I USE:
Nikon D5300 DSLR
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/

Пікірлер: 6

@thelightninghunter23 3 ай бұрын

Here is what I think is happening... Most of your tall towers are TV/FM towers. The transmitters themselves are on the order of 100 feet in height and are mounted on top of steel lattice towers to improve coverage. The tower in this video is an AM tower. Because the AM wavelength is much longer than FM, many AM towers are themselves transmitters. This means that they have to be isolated from ground, and those beads that you see on the guy wires, called "plinkos", act as electrical insulators. When you have a strong electric field due to a thunderstorm, electrons will concentrate towards one end of the tower, and you end up with a high electric potential across the tower. Since the guy wires are divided by insulators, they cannot respond in the same way, and you end up with a strong potential between the tower and guy wires. Lightning activity above the tower cause rapid changes in the electric field and the resultant potential across the tower. This is actually how most upward lightning is generated, as the electric potential between the tower top and air around it is high enough to cause electrical breakdown! While the lightning flashes in this video weren't enough to trigger upward lightning, it appears the same process created enough potential between the tower and guy wires to flash over the plinkos. Given that the plinkos are several feet in length and the sound level was similar to firecrackers, it tells you the level of voltages that we're dealing with!

@annes9324 11 ай бұрын

Great eye and instinct for lightning!

@michaelkeene3051 11 ай бұрын

Great capture mate

@bucephalus00 11 ай бұрын

That's up there with sprites and streamers!

@Kw1161 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for showing another example of why you should not go near any tower during an electrical storm. Unless you are a “free” energy advocate…😂! Have a great day!