In June 1996 a sphere of light the size of a tennis ball flew into a printing factory in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. A dozen
workers looked up in astonishment as the blue and white ball whizzed round inside, spinning along girders, hitting print
machinery, sending sparks flying. Finally it hit a window and exploded with an orange flash and a tremendous bang, knocking
out the telephone switchboard. The whole place was lit up, said Simon Pocock, one of the staff. The sparks were
unbelievable - it was like a horror movie. Three people received electric shocks, one lady was hit in the shoulder.
Thousands of people all over the world have
reported seeing mysterious glowing balls of light gliding inside their homes and
even inside aircraft. They vary in size from a golfball to a football, in a variety of iridescent colours, with little noise,
no smell and generally disappear by hitting television sets or other electrical fittings with a pop. In the most violent
cases, glowing balls have exploded into flames and set houses ablaze. It's a phenomenon called ball lightning . It usually
come during
thunderstorms, but no one knows what it is except that it's an electrical freak of nature. Ball lightning might
even help explain Foo Fighters . In World War II many pilots reported glowing balls of light flying alongside their
aircraft. They thought it was some sort of secret enemy weapon, but German and Allied pilots both experienced the same
phenomenon. To this day the lights remain a complete mystery.
We know that thunderstorms can put on some other very weird light displays. In olden days mariners often saw the tops of
their ship masts glow as thunderstorms developed. They called it St Elmo's fire , and its eerie light comes from the intense
static electricity streaming up tall objects and discharging as a glowing corona. One of the most fantastic displays in
recent times was in 1976 when many of the players at a school football match in Dover, England found their heads glowing and
understandably abandoned their game! In itself St Elmo's isn't dangerous but it often appears just before a lightning strike,
so if you do experience it, it might be wise to get out of the area as soon as possible.
Strange Showers
One overcast day in 1939 a thunderstorm broke out in Trowbidge in Wiltshire, but this was no ordinary shower. As the heavens
opened up, people at the town's open air swimming pool were astonished to see hundreds of small frogs falling down from the
sky. It was a job to walk on the path without treading on them , according to one woman reported in The Times.
Over the years all sorts of animals and plants have showered down during thunderstorms, possibly sucked up from rivers and
lakes by tornadoes (or their watery equivalents - waterspouts) into thunderclouds and then dumped miles away in heavy rain.
Another sort of shower of wildlife might be easier to explain. Dozens of dead birds have occasionally been seen plummeting
out of the sky, sometimes partly frozen. These poor animals were probably swept up high in the powerful updrafts of a
thundercloud, then frozen like hailstones before gravity took over.Giant pieces of ice have also been reported crashing to
earth, and these are often blamed on ice falling from aircraft. But the largest recorded ice fall was 20 feet long and fell
on Scotland in 1849 - long before aircraft were invented! They might be hailstones which have somehow joined into a massive
lump of ice but nobody really knows.
But most common of all are rains of blood which have been reported all over the world ever since biblical times. An important
clue to their cause came in July 1968 in southern England, when a shower coated everything in red gritty dust. It was fine
sand blown up from the Sahara and carried over a thousand miles inside a massive high pressure systems before falling in a
rainshower.