Earth

Gigantic jets – a rare type of lightning – caught on video

Animated night scene. Long white bolt of lightning moving upward from the top of a billowing cloud and forking.
Gigantic jets – a rare type of lightning – blast upward from a thunderstorm on August 4, 2024, near Puerto Rico. Watch the full video here. Image via Astronomical Society of the Caribbean.

Gigantic jets are a kind of lightning discharge

On August 4, 2024, intense thunderstorms exploded about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Puerto Rico. Some observers reported seeing a couple of powerful bursts of electrical charge with their eyes alone, as some kind of brief “red lighting.” These rare phenomena are known as gigantic jets. Gigantic jets are a kind of lightning discharge that happens above thunderstorms. While most lightning discharge occurs between clouds and the ground, “gigantic jets” start at the cloud tops and reach all the way into the ionosphere.

Meteor cameras from the Astronomical Society of the Caribbean captured images of the curious event. Monochromatic (black and white) cameras show good detail of the shape or structure of these gigantic jets, while a color camera shows a burst of red light going upward.

Though gigantic jets are associated with thunderstorms, you can sometimes see them on clear, starry nights. That’s because the storm they are connected to can be so far away as to be beyond Earth’s curvature from the observer’s point of view. The storm is closer to the ground while the gigantic jets stretch all the way to the ionosphere. The ionosphere begins some 30 miles (48 km) above the ground, and gigantic jets can reach some 50 miles (80 km) above Earth.

In fact, gigantic jets are so high above Earth that astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured one near Thailand on July 1, 2024.

Gigantic jets: Looking down at Earth from orbit. Long red forked lightning extending into space and seen closer in an inset.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station got a view of this gigantic jet near Thailand on July 1, 2024. Image via NASA.

More on this unique lightning

Gigantic jets can be as much as 10 times larger than ordinary lightning, according to a 2022 study by the Georgia Institute of Technology. They are also separate from a similar phenomenon known as red sprites or lightning sprites. Gigantic jets are more rare than lightning sprites, a similar phenomenon that can occur above storms. NASA said:

The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar to a cloud-to-above strike called blue jets, while the tops appear similar to upper-atmosphere red sprites.

A long, branched bright light shooting upward in a dark sky. Upside-down broom shape.
On August 4, 2024, cameras set up to capture meteors in Puerto Rico instead caught gigantic jets above a thunderstorm some 100 miles (160 km) away. Image via Astronomical Society of the Caribbean.
Satellite view of Puerto Rico with an arrow pointing to colorful blotches over the dark sea south of it.
Here’s the storm offshore of Puerto Rico that produced the gigantic jets on August 4, 2024. Image via RAMMB/ CIRA.

Bottom line: On August 4, 2024, gigantic jets – a rare type of lightning – exploded off the coast of Puerto Rico. Cameras from the Astronomical Society of the Caribbean caught this unique event on video.

Read more: Blue jets, red sprites and other flashes

Posted 
August 7, 2024
 in 
Earth

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Eddie Irizarry

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