{"id":36875,"date":"2025-07-04T02:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T02:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36875\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T02:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T02:13:11","slug":"incredible-video-captured-during-alberta-storm-could-be-rare-ball-lightning-event-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/36875\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Incredible video\u2019 captured during Alberta storm could be rare ball lightning event: scientist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No injuries were reported after an intense night of stormy weather unfolded in central Alberta on Wednesday night, but once the storms passed, one couple was left with a strange video of something bright and shiny a few hundred metres from their home that they could not make sense of.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/70c8fc80.png\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ed Pardy told Global News that he and his wife Melinda stepped onto the back porch of their home near Rich Valley, Alta., just before 7 p.m. to get a closer look at the storm passing through which featured fierce lightning all around, and also at one point triggered <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11271107\/tornado-warning-alberta-july-central-alberta\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tornado watches and warnings in the region<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter a rather vicious lightning strike, we saw a ball of fire kind of \u2026 about 20 feet above the ground,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAnd it kind of stayed there in a big round ball.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Melinda suggested capturing what they were seeing on video, and they were able to record about 23 seconds of the phenomenon until it seemed to disappear as quickly as it came about.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was like, \u2018What is that?\u2019 It wasn\u2019t even the colour of fire,\u201d she recounted, adding she wondered if it was some type of electric fireball. \u201cIt was bluish in colour.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/national.jpg\" alt=\"Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n<p>Get the day&#8217;s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"c-blockquote l-article__blockquote\">\n<p class=\"c-blockquote__content l-article__blockquoteContent\">\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ed described what they saw as a slowly moving \u201cbright orb of blue light\u201d that he believes was about a metre or two metres in diameter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBefore it went out there was a bit of a pop and the whole thing kind of disintegrated and went away,\u201d he said. \u201cI was glad it was far away from our house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Global News showed the video to Frank Florian, senior manager of planetarium and space sciences at the TELUS World of Science in Edmonton.<\/p>\n<p>He described it as \u201can incredible video\u201d of something \u201cvery strange associated with severe weather conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said he believes it is possible the Pardys saw ball lightning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt could be ball lightning or it could be something that\u2019s more of an artifact of a lightning strike itself,\u201d he explained, adding that some scientists are researching the phenomenon of ball lightning and trying to recreate such events in laboratory settings.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\tTrending Now\n\t<\/p>\n<ul class=\"l-inlineStories__posts c-posts c-posts--inline \">\n<li class=\"c-posts__item\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11269973\/lululemon-suing-costco\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/lululemon.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tWhy is Lululemon suing Costco? A closer look at the lawsuit about \u2018dupes\u2019\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li class=\"c-posts__item\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11258737\/covid-vaccine-injury-program-visp-oxaro-workplace-phac\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1751595191_821_VISP-WORKER-SILHOUETTE.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Nothing was ready\u2019: Inside Canada\u2019s Vaccine Injury Support Program\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote class=\"c-blockquote l-article__blockquote\">\n<p class=\"c-blockquote__content l-article__blockquoteContent\">\u201cBall lightning is a really cool event, but it\u2019s not really well understood because it\u2019s such a rare event.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Florian said the events are believed to unfold when there is plasma \u2014 a superheated gas \u2014 confined to a small area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLightning itself is a plasma,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have an electrical path going through the sky from the cloud to the Earth, kind of meet up in the middle and it superheats the air really, really quickly, and it creates a plasma<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs that plasma expands very quickly, it creates the thunder that\u2019s associated with basically lightning strikes. But when you get plasma itself happening, being created by these lightning strikes, sometimes you can get that plasma itself \u2014 or region of plasma \u2014 to just linger for a little while.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it\u2019s in a ball shape, they call it ball lightning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Florian noted that lightning itself is a dangerous phenomenon, and that ball lightning sightings are \u201cpretty rare events.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey do create a spectacle,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if what he saw frightened him, Ed indicated it hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was mostly curious,\u201d he said. \u201cI like to see stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013With files from Kabi Moulitharan, Global News<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tMore on Science and Tech<br \/>\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No injuries were reported after an intense night of stormy weather unfolded in central Alberta on Wednesday night,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26718,30051,30052,2147,50,159,5313,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-36875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta-weather","9":"tag-ball-lightning","10":"tag-ball-of-lightning","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-severe-weather","15":"tag-weather"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114792549830943483","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}