Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1907 — Lightning Flashes. [ARTICLE]

Lightning Flashes.

Lightning flashes In a storm are found by an English observer to be much less irregular in period than they appear. Such storms have usually foci, sometimes three, from which the flashes radiate, and the discharges from each come at regular Intervals. The apparent irregularity is due to the varying rates of the different centers. In one storm noticed the two foci were about a mile and a half apart, and In an hour the northern center emitted thirty flashes at Intervals of fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty and ninety seconds, and the southern center'gave sixteen flashes at Intervals of seventeen, thirty-four and fifty-one seconds. Another unexplained observation Is that Just before each great flash there Is a momentary faint lighting up of the sky In the stormy region.