A “Sprite Lightning” was spotted during Tropical Storm Nicole in Puerto Rico.
This week, Tropical Storm Nicole already made landfall on the Florida shore. Sprite lighting, a rare meteorological occurrence, was however created by this storm before it was made ashore.
Some of the clouds from Tropical Storm Nicole‘s path this week extended as far south as Puerto Rico as it headed toward Florida.
An electromagnetic bolt that pulsed over several clouds over Puerto Rico overnight between Monday and Tuesday was captured on camera by photographer Frankie Lucena and posted on Twitter.
There, a photographer managed to get a shot of the enigmatic and bizarre “sprite lightning” occurrence. In the footage, a little flash of lightning can be seen quickly crossing the leftmost part of the shot before dissipating.
According to Space.com, sprite lightning, commonly referred to as “red lightning” because of its reddish tint, is created by pent-up electricity in clouds that shoots upward.
The video, according to Mr. Lucena’s Twitter post, was taken on Monday night just after midnight as Tropical Storm Nicole’s storm clouds’ periphery passed over Puerto Rico.
Sprites, according to Caitano L. Silva, a professor of physics at New Mexico Tech, are enormous, charged discharges that happen above thunderstorms. Approximately 50 miles into the sky, sprites can be seen.
Sprite lightning structures can reach a height of 100 kilometers (62 miles) or more, according to a Sprite lightning researcher who spoke with Smithsonian in 2013. Sprite lightning forms can also endure only a few hundredths of a second.
According to NASA, the phenomena, which can happen over thunderstorms, was first captured on camera in 1989. The agency notes that little is known regarding the formation of these enigmatic and stunning flashes of light or the reasons behind them.
Tropical Storm Nicole was an exceptionally massive hurricane that covered hundreds of miles, enabling the storm’s outer edges to make an impact far further north in Florida while still affecting Puerto Rico.
Communities in Georgia through New England are being soaked by Tropical Storm Nicole’s remnants as it moves inland along the US Atlantic coast.
According to CNN, Tropical Storm Nicole, a Category 1 storm, slammed Florida this week and claimed at least five lives. Numerous beachfront residences in Volusia County have been ruled hazardous, according to the network, as storm surge brought by Tropical Storm Nicole drove waters up to six feet (1.8 meters) along the shore.
It was an exceptionally late-season storm that developed near the end of the Atlantic Hurricane season, which runs from June to November.
Aside from sporadic lightning, Tropical Storm Nicole, which made landfall in the Bahamas and the Southeast United States, left a path of ominous and destructive weather occurrences in its wake. According to CNN, the most dangerous aspect of Category 1 Tropical Storm Nicole was her tremendous winds, which caused dangerous storm surges to form along the coast of Eastern Florida when coastal homes were dragged away by the storm.
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