I thought I'd dredge this up, to look at high cruising decision making with regards to super cells. I've been watching a few local thunderstorms the last week or so and have noted a lot of upper atmosphere discharges (sprites and jets). One particular storm I was diverting around, from where I was sitting in the mid 20s I could clearly see several blue jets and sprites, and frequently during the presuppose of the storm. These discharges were usually accompanied by intense rapid, explosion like lightning from within the cell before releasing into the atmosphere. The lightning was continuous (not essentially continuous, there were multiple strikes per second) with positive strikes every 10-30 seconds. Now this storm would have been impossible for most jets to out climb as it capped out at around 55,000ft, but it got me thinking; how many pilots are actually over flying these types of storms, especially in light of recent evidence that suggests the gamma radiation released from these discharges have the potential to cause serious harm to health.
It's also not the sort of thing I get to see ever day and to me, this sort of activity is pretty rare (up until recently had only seen a few sprites throughout my career) how often are these witnessed by others?