Melbourne, Florida near Viera (July 19, 2009)

This storm was severe thunderstorm warned. Shortly after this clip I drove into it and exeprienced pea sized hail.
The lightning show one hour later further north near Cape Canaveral was spectacular

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• severe
• thunderstorm
• cape canaveral
• melbourne
• hail
• lightning
• sponsler
• highspeeddirt
• cocoa beach
• brevard
• county

[Iplaybasketball2225]

there was a funnel cloud accoiated with this my mom was shopping at the time haha she gotta pic.

[sponsler]

@Iplaybasketball2225 COOL! Wish I had seen that.

[vaportrails44]

I was literally down the street from you this day...that is St. John's church across from the baseball stadium off Stadium Parkway...I live off Viera Blvd and this storm was the worst I had ever seen around here.

[sponsler]

@vaportrails44 Wow, what a coincidence. I had driven from Cape Canaveral that day and pulled off I-95 at exit 195...then headed south toward the VA clinic. There was a separate storm, much to my surprise, that was encountered on the return home. Lightning over the beaches of Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral was incredible on that one, but it didn't look nearly as photogenic as this one was.

[11manko]

Great Supercell :)

[doodlestroodle]

@sponsler Yes, I've heard that snap myself - when I was a child and my school was struck by lightning one morning. In this case it was caused by ball lightning that landed on the teacher's desk and then hit the piano (we were in the music room) and then "burst". I didn't see it, but the teacher and one boy on the front row did. We all heard the snap as it popped.

[sponsler]

@doodlestroodle If you want to HEAR lightning..see my video..THE SNAP..you can hear the lightning snap it was so close.,But I could use that video because it's on 8mm hi8..and I don't have the hardware to transfer over

[doodlestroodle]

@sponsler Yes, there are some flashes back there in the hail, but in the first 30 secs you can see the strobes quite clearly. I wouldn't normally be so pedantic about this little detail, but I was set off on a kind of crusade by the many people who claimed to have filmed "close" lightning when, in fact, they had filmed a distant bolt with a "ghost" flash in the lens. NOT that this is one of those cases, I hasten to add. Thanks for posting btw and happy trails on your future chases.

[sponsler]

I think those flashes might just be lightning back behind the curtain of hail. There was pea-dime sized hail in this storm too. After the video I got in the car and drove right into the storm to sample it. There was a LOT of lightning...but the best was when I cam e back home and it was lightning like crazy here in Cape Canaveral from a different storm

[doodlestroodle]

Well spotted Jazzy, but after you pointed it out I went back and took another look and it seemed like a strobe light. Sure enough at around the 2:02 mark there is a strobe flash in the exact spot. What interests me, though, is whatever that huge discharge was at 2:31. There are reports of megabolts that go right up to and above the storm top. Is that what we saw here?