Do you commonly see St Elmo's Fire?

[AlexF]

After a great response to my post in the 'military' forum, I'm now trying to close the net on finding, and filming, St Elmo's Fire. This electrical glow seems to appear under two sets of conditions - one is in 'shower clouds' which are not part of an electrical storm, and the other is in a full electrical storm.

Obviously you'd generally avoid flying into an electrical storm, but is there anyone out there flying a route in which they come across St Elmo's with some frequency? Somewhere where perhaps mounting a camera in the cockpit might get us a good chance of seeing it within a few months?

Any help would be fabulous.

Thanks,
Alex
([email protected])

[Rainboe]

Flying international longhaul, I found it a rare occurence- maybe once or twice a year. I always associated it with heavy storm activity and heavy cloud- not just shower clouds, and I believe it most commonly occured in the Far East and central Africa in the monsoon season when there are pretty big Cb clouds about. It needs an electric sky. It will only be seen at night. It's an instantaneous flickering image of lightning of what looked to me like a tree shape from the bottom of the windscreen to the top, flickering irregularly for an instant every few seconds for short time intervals, most useful for calling the stewardesses up to the flight deck to tell them to look out of the window and get a faceful. Quite impressive, but how good photography will be is difficult to judge- it is instantaneous, totally unpredictable and not that bright.

[mikepops]

Saw it this autumn in Europe, no storms present, it was in a stratus cloud about FL170. No flickering just continuous presence of snake-like violet arcs, similar in movement to those you see in an ornamental "plasma ball" only thicker, about 8-10mm average. The whole thing lasted about 5 seconds and I was gobsmacked as it was my first sighting of the phenomenon. It felt like Twilight Zone:)

[Old Smokey]

Very pretty, a little un-nerving, totally harmless, and, as Rainboe says, pretty common in the Far East, I see it every month or two over the Bay of Bengal (along with the other meteorological wonders of the Bay of Bengal). In common with other posters, I've never seen it associated with Cb activity in the vicinity, but rather, in the wet "soggy" atmospheres associated with Monsoon activity.

One F/O did his damndest to catch it on film, and after numerous attempts did indeed "catch" one, an itty bitty bit of light against a black background - a total disappointment. I think that a video camera might be the only practical way to capture St. Elmo.

Regards,

Old Smokey

[leggit]

Alex your e-mail address [email protected] is not recognised!

I have been of flt decks for a number of years, currently SFO on 747’s and have seen this many, many times.

More prevalent, obviously, within the vicinity of storm clouds- you do not have to be in them.

Due to weather characteristics Asia is favorite !

Btw….

St. Elmo's fire is an electroluminescent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroluminescence) coronal discharge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge) caused by the ionization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion) of the air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air) during thunderstorms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm) inside of a strong electric field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_field). Although referred to as "fire", St. Elmo's fire is in fact a low density, relatively low temperature plasma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29) caused by massive atmospheric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_atmosphere) electrical potential differences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_difference) which exceed the dielectric breakdown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_breakdown) value of air (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air) at around 3 megavolts per meter. St. Elmo's fire is named after Erasmus of Formiae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_of_Formiae) (also called St. Elmo), the patron saint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patron_saint) of sailors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor) (who sometimes held its appearance to be auspicious). Alternatively, Peter Gonzalez (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gonzalez) is said to be the St. Elmo after whom St. Elmo's fire has its name. – Wikipidea

Regards

[TopBunk]

I would tend to agree - I see it maybe 6 times a year on average. Difficult to predict the exact circumstances when it will occur. As said, often in the moist/soggy atmosphere in the vicinity of CB activity.

Usually, as described by Rainboe, a tree shaped electric blue/white flickering lasting up to 30 seconds - rarely much longer.

One of the strangest events I have had is descending into Zurich at night about 2 years ago. We were descending through about 12000ft around the edge of some cells, and we got a unicorn horn-like spike of a discharge projecting straight forward from the wiper blade bolt about 4 feet in length. It lasted about 3 seconds before we heard a dull thud - which I guess was a minor lightening strike/static discharge - and it then disappeared. Associated with it were the usual heavy static on the VHF radios.

Very surreal!

[Rainboe]

Similar years ago descending in cloud in a 747 into Bermuda at 17,000' in heavy thunderstorm activity. A continuous stream of not brilliant electrical discharge appeared coming from directly ahead in the cloud. Lasted several seconds, and appeared to be coming directly towards somewhere between my knees. I looked rather wide-eyed at the Captain who was looking equally as startled at it, then me. Terminated with a loud bang and flash. I actually flet something on my wrist, which held a brand new Tissot electrical watch. When the shock and crisis was over, I looked at it expecting a smoking wreck, but it survived the encounter. Quite a startling experience to see a large winding snake of electrical discharge coming straight out of the blue (or grey) right at you.

[JW411]

It was certainly much more common on the propeller-driven aircraft that I have flown in the past. Whether this was because of the lower heights that we flew around at or whether it was because we had more moving parts I know not.

I have never seen it anywhere else but on the windscreen on jet aircraft but I have seen it all over the props and the airframe on turboprops.

I well remember my instructor showing me how you could wet your fingertip and get the discharge to arc across from one of the windscreen pillars on the old Vickers Varsity. It didn't hurt!

[TopBunk]

I well remember my instructor showing me how you could wet your fingertip and get the discharge to arc across from one of the windscreen pillars on the old Vickers Varsity. It didn't hurt!

I wonder who was the first to dare to find out:uhoh::eek::ooh:

[JW411]

People will tell you that St Elmo's fire is harmless. That is not strictly true as I can tell you.

We came out of Tripoli/Idris one night headed for Malta. It was very hot and very humid so I was only wearing a lightweight flying suit and a pair of shreddies. There were a lot of big clouds around and dear old St Elmo was in evidence.

The loadmaster came up the ladder with the tea and the coffee. He had never seen St Elmo's fire before and when it streaked across the windscreen, he dropped the tray in fright and deposited all of the hot drinks in my groin!

The family jewels looked like a pair of tangerines for a couple of weeks after. Don't let anyone tell you that St Elmo's fire is harmless!

[AlexF]

Many apologies - that's because I typo-ed!!

[email protected]

Thanks again for your help!

A

[PAXboy]

thread drift ...

The best I have seen it was at FL Zero! Whilst on holiday in Jamaica ... late at night ... we were skinny dipping and the Elmo's fire was beautiful. As was she ... :E:E

[Belgique]

First recall seeing it in a Neptune in the mid 60's in the middle of the Indian Ocean at night, low-level, in a MAD hunting circle.
Recall innocently saying over the ICS to (a 12 man crew): "Cheesh, look at this, fire up the front!"

That fired them all up better than with everybody asleep in the cruise and running a tank dry (or backfiring a recip during a manual spark climb-power burn-out). One individual swept aside the cockpit curtain and peered in with stark fear in his eyes - and then, after about 30 seconds of trying to figure it all out, I gave him a classic Rod Serling look and said: "We're in a time-warp NAV. It's the Devil's Cauldron". His eyes nearly popped out of his head and he was pulled back by other rear-enders trying to have a look see. Amazing how many pilots/Navs/AeO's/signallers/F'Engs etc have never seen it.
.
About 20 years later I tried the same thing at low-level in mid-Pacific in a P3. "Omigawd, look at that. Fire up the front" It was much more speccy because the whole of the APS80 fwd radar main-lobe was ionizing out to a distance of at least 100 yards (as well as the dancing spark show on all the windshields). The guy who entered the flight-deck was carrying a fire-extinguisher. I screamed at him: "Quick, put it out. We're all going to die".

He never did appreciate the joke. How's it going Rick Paff?