Published: October 1,2016
As major hurricane Matthew rapidly intensified into a Category 5 just north of Colombia, something peculiar was lighting up the skies far above Matthew's devastating winds and gargantuan waves. Lightning was electrifying the skies for hundreds of miles around Matthew's eyewall and eastern feederbands.
But this wasn't entirely the normal lightning that you think of that zig-zags its way to the ground. Although lightning was also striking the Caribbean Sea below, there were also upper atmospheric lightning strikes, called sprites, exploding above the high thunderstorm cloud tops below.
Sprites
seen near Aruba and Colombia high above Hurricane Matthew from a
vantage point 400 miles southwest of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico.(Frankie Lucena)
According to the glossary of the American Meteorological Society, sprites are usually weak bursts of energy that are released directly over an active thunderstorm cloud with cloud-to-ground lightning below. Sprites also go by a few other names in early research on the topic, such as upward lightning and cloud-to-stratospheric lightning.
Sprites are generally colored red, but can appear blue similar to the color of some lightning strikes closer to the cloud. Some sprites can reach 55 miles into the atmosphere.
Sprites are usually very quick, lasting only a few milliseconds and are hard to capture in photography.
For that fact alone, sprites are fairly rare sights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=all0IAXa2UA
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