Slow Lightning

Abstract

As far as I know, the first description of slow lightning occurs in your issue of November 7. It must be very rare, for I have never met any one who would readily believe in its existence. I write to testify to the accuracy of Mr. Crawford's description, though I have not seen it quite as slow as the flash which he timed. The best example that I ever saw was in a storm over London some eighteen years ago. A thick stream poured down, in the sort of curve which liquid takes from a kettle, and was then slowly joined by a similar stream from the opposite direction, the united stream then continuing its slow course downwards. I was not where I could see the end of it. The peculiarities—the breadth of the streams, and their deliberate motion—could scarcely be an optical delusion. The streams did not appear to me as “chains.”