The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, dividing fire into two types - earthly and heavenly, argued that during a thunderstorm "the stars seem to descend from the sky and sit on the masts of ships." But the main difference between heavenly fire and earthly fire is that it does not burn, does not ignite objects, and it cannot be extinguished with water.
Cohorts of Roman legionnaires, setting up a night bivouac, stuck their spears into the ground, surrounding the camp with a kind of fence. When the weather foreshadowed a night thunderstorm, blue tassels of "heavenly fire" were often lit on the spear points. It was a good sign from heaven: since ancient times, such a glow was called the lights of the Dioscuri, who were considered the heavenly patrons of warriors and sailors.
2000 years later, in the more enlightened XVII-XVIII centuries, this phenomenon was adapted to warn of a thunderstorm. In many European castles, a spear was installed on a dais. Since the fire of the Dioscuri was not visible during the day, the guard regularly brought a halberd to the point of the spear: if sparks jumped between them, he should immediately ring the bell, warning of an impending thunderstorm. Naturally, at this time the phenomenon was no longer called a pagan name, and since most often such a glow appeared on the spiers and crosses of churches, many local names appeared: the lights of Saints Nicholas, Claudia, Helena and, finally, St. Elmo.
Depending on what the "heavenly fire" appears on, it can take different forms: uniform glow, individual flickering lights, brushes or torches. Sometimes it resembles an earthly flame so much that they tried to extinguish it. There were other curiosities as well.
In 1695, a sailing ship was caught in a thunderstorm in the Mediterranean Sea. Fearing a storm, the captain ordered to lower the sails. And then over 30 lights of St. Elmo appeared on different parts of the ship's mast. On the mainmast weather vane, the fire reached half a meter in height. The captain, apparently having taken a pint of rum before, sent a sailor to the mast to remove the fire. Climbing upstairs, he shouted that the fire hiss like an angry cat, and does not want to be removed. Then the captain ordered to take it off along with the weather vane. But as soon as the sailor touched the weather vane, the fire jumped to the end of the mast, from where it was impossible to remove it.
A little earlier, on June 11, 1686, Saint Elmo descended on a French warship. Abbot Shausi, who was on board, left personal impressions of his meeting with the descendants. “A terrible wind was blowing,” wrote the abbot, “it was raining, lightning flashed, the whole sea was on fire. Suddenly I saw on all our masts the lights of St. Elmo, which descended on the deck. They were the size of a fist, shone brightly, jumped and did not burn at all. Everyone smelled sulfur. The floating lights felt at home on the ship. This continued until dawn."
On December 30, 1902, the steamer Moravia was near the Cape Verde islands. Captain Simpson, taking over the watch, made an entry with his own hand in the logbook: “For a whole hour, lightning blazed in the sky. Steel ropes, tops of masts, booms and cargo arrows - everything shone. Lit lanterns seemed to be hung on all the stays every four feet. The glow was accompanied by a strange noise: as if myriads of cicadas had settled in a rig, or deadwood and dry grass were burning with a crack.
The lights of St. Elmo also appear on aircraft. Navigator A. G. Zaitsev left the following record about his observation: “It was in the summer of 1952 over Ukraine. We passed thunderclouds as we descended. It went dark outside, as if dusk had come. Suddenly we saw light blue flames, twenty centimeters high, dancing along the leading edge of the wing. There were so many of them that the wing seemed to be burning all over the rib. Three minutes later the lights disappeared as suddenly as they appeared."
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The "heavenly fire" is also observed by the specialists who are supposed to do this by the nature of their work. In June 1975, employees of the Astrakhan Hydrometeorological Observatory were returning from work in the north of the Caspian Sea. “In complete darkness, we got out of the reed thickets and went through shallow water to a motor boat left two kilometers from the coast,” wrote down later ND Gershtansky, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences. - Lightning flashed somewhere in the north. Suddenly, our hair glowed with a phosphorescent light. Tongues of cold flame appeared near the fingers of the raised hands. When we lifted the measuring pole, its top lit up so brightly that the manufacturer's tag could be read. All this lasted about ten minutes. Interestingly, there was no glow below a meter above the water surface.
But St. Elmo's fires appear not only before a thunderstorm. In the summer of 1958, employees of the Institute of Geography carried out meteorological measurements under the International Geophysical Year program on a glacier in the Zailiyskiy Alatau at an altitude of 4000 meters. On June 23, a blizzard began, it got colder. On the night of June 26, the meteorologists, leaving the house, saw an amazing picture: blue tongues of cold flame appeared on the meteorological instruments, antennas, icicles on the roof of the house. It also appeared on the fingers of the raised hands. On the rain gauge, the flame height reached 10 centimeters. One of the employees decided to touch the flame on the hook of the gradient bar with a pencil. At the same instant, lightning struck the bar. People were blinded and knocked down. When they got up, the fire disappeared, but after a quarter of an hour it reappeared in the same places.
In the south of the Tver region is the Rodnya mound. Its top is overgrown with a coniferous forest, and the locals try not to go there, since the mound is notorious. In the summer of 1991, a group of tourists, camped nearby for the night, observed a strange phenomenon: in the pre-storm weather, blue lights began to light up one after another over the trees on the top of the mound. When the tourists climbed the hill the next day, they accidentally discovered that some trees were equipped with "lightning rods" in the form of copper wire twisted around the trunks. Apparently, there were some jokers who wished to somehow exploit the notoriety of the hill.
The nature of St. Elmo's fires is undoubtedly associated with electrical processes in the atmosphere. In good weather, the electric field strength at the ground is 100-120 V / m, that is, between the fingers of a raised hand and the ground, it will reach about 220 volts. Unfortunately, at a very meager current. Before a thunderstorm, this field strength rises to several thousand V / m, and this is already sufficient for the occurrence of a corona discharge. The same effect can be seen in snowstorms, sandstorms and volcanic clouds.
Source: "Supernatural Forces of Nature"