Slow motion footage of the 'most insane strike of lightning' leaves viewers in disbelief.
Some of the wildest moments in life you just have to see to believe.
We can capture some truly rare and unimaginable shots from the mind-blowing pictures of planet Earth to the truly terrifying vastness of space.
Back here on the ground, a man in Wichita, Kansas filmed one of those moments and after posting the footage on X, people are truly amazed.
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According to Fox Weather, the National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning that night, with 'nickel-size hail and damaging winds in the forecast.'
But what Taylor Vonfeldt ended up capturing was way more intense, describing it as the 'most insane strike of lightning' he's ever seen.
Showing the stormy sky above his neighbourhood, sudden flashes of lightning can be seen clawing their way up from the ground like electric fingers until the bright forks illuminate the night sky like a furious god’s wrath. Vonfeldt later added that the footage was filmed in slow motion on an iPhone 11.
While we're familiar with lightning strikes shooting from the sky to the ground, Vonfeldt's footage shows a rare lightning phenomenon known as an upward strike, where the bolt shoots up from the ground instead of down from the sky.
With the footage going viral and many weather stations requesting to use Vonfeldt's clip, meteorologist Chris Vagasky weighed in to explain why this kind of lightning strike is so rare.
“Usually what happens when you have upward lightning is that you have a strong electric field go over the top of a tall object, like a skyscraper or radio tower, and upward leaders are initiated off the tower as a result,” says Vagasky. “They connect with the electric field in the cloud and you get lightning.”
AccuWeather’s Jesse Ferrell added that these flashes, known as 'ground-to-cloud' strikes, are often brighter and more intense. This also makes them easier to capture in slow motion.
"They are initiated at the top of an object, most often a man-made building or communications tower," he explained. "While they are the minority of lightning strikes, they can be brilliant and occur well after the storm, outside of heavy rain, allowing us to capture them with clarity," Ferrell explained.
When the clip was shared on a Reddit forum, viewers have been flooding the comments section with their humurous insights.
"Pretty sure this is what happens when you reach level 1 million on candy crush," one Reddit user wrote.
"This is the stuff [dreams] nightmares are made of," another commented while someone else claimed: "It’s beautiful and yet it’s also terrifying".