Rarely seen red lightning lights up Canada's night sky. What caused ominous display?

[TexasTowelie]

Red lightning appeared over Western Canada this week and photos show the rarely seen phenomenon resembled something akin to dragon’s breath.

It appeared Tuesday night over southern Manitoba, as photographer Deb Maluk was trying to capture images of the Aurora Borealis.

Maluk tweeted three photos of the fiery red bolt, which appears to have shot out of the sky and then splintered across the horizon.

Red lightning doesn’t exist in the literal sense, according to the National Weather Service.

The closest known phenomena is something called a red sprite, which occurs high in the atmosphere “directly above an active thunderstorm,” NOAA says. “They are rarely seen with the human eye ... and not well understood, “ NOAA reports.

Read more: https://www.macon.com/news/nation-world/national/article253138353.html


Photographer Deb Maluk was trying to capture images of the Aurora Borealis in southern Manitoba this week when she took multiple shots of rarely seen red lightning. PHOTO COURTESY DEB MALUK

Link to tweet

[Walleye]

1. Never forget the night we had 2 blinding flashes of bright neon green lightning. Just last year here

[abqtommy]

2. A casual reading of the news shows that there's a lot of wildfires burning in Canada at the

moment. This produces a lot of air pollution and can result in lightning strikes appearing to be red in
color.

[NurseJackie]

3. Science!

[abqtommy]

4. Thanks. Science is practical, too!