The current winter period for the territory of Belarus, undoubtedly, cannot be called anything other than abnormal in terms of the temperature regime. Warm December, late January and projected February will be remembered for a long time by the inhabitants of our country. But the weather anomalies, apparently, here were not limited only to record freezing temperatures for the winter months. As follows from the message received within the framework of the Ufoseti project about the observation of an unusual phenomenon, the beginning of December in Belarus was also marked by unusual thunderstorm activity.
December 2, 2015, Bobruisk (Mogilev region), early morning. It was about 04.20, when from the window of their apartment the residents of one of the Bobruisk high-rise buildings in the western direction noticed bright flashes in the sky, occurring with different intensities and covering large areas. "The flashes moved from north-west to south-west in a few seconds, brightly illuminating the sky, in especially bright moments, rays were visible." Their frequency increased, the intervals became shorter and clearer. And here:
“During a particularly bright flash, we noticed a small luminous ball that appeared at the bottom of the tree (we observed from an apartment on the 6th floor). The ball mixed up as if it were reasonable, flew over the road over the pedestrian crossing, it was clearly visible, disappeared for a short time (a second or two) and appeared on the other side of the street. He moved only over the crossroads, after which he flew up to the lamp and disappeared."
After the appearance and disappearance of the luminous ball, the intensity of the flares in the sky began to decrease, and soon everything stopped altogether. All this heavenly performance lasted about half an hour and, as eyewitnesses noted, took place in complete silence. In view of the fact that it was already December-month in the yard, the author of the message that came to us rejected the possibility of observing a thunderstorm and ball lightning. So what could it be?
In contrast to the eyewitness, we did not so categorically reject the version with thunderstorm activity. Yes, thunderstorms are not typical for the winter period, but quite sometimes they happen at this time of the year when conditions are suitable for this. There is even such a concept as "snow (snow) thunderstorm", which, however, professional meteorologists do not really like. This rather rare occurrence is often accompanied by heavy snow, freezing rain or ice pellets. As a rule, it is typical for territories located near non-freezing large bodies of water (seas, large lakes), and for southern territories with a warm, humid climate, they are not at all unusual. In the interior of the continent, a thunderstorm front in winter can form with the arrival of cyclones with warm air.
Unfortunately, no mention of thunderstorm activity was found in the weather reports for Bobruisk for the specified period (see the archive of the rp5.ru resource), but it should be noted that the meteorological conditions were favorable for that. The air temperature is slightly above zero, high humidity, heavy rains took place the night before. But the absence of data on thunderstorms in meteorological reports does not mean at all that such was not reliably. As a rule, at weather stations, readings are taken at certain time intervals in three hour increments. So the observation in Bobruisk fell in the middle of such an interval between fixing the readings at 03.00 and 06.00. And since everything happened in an early winter morning, when the overwhelming majority of people were still asleep, and, moreover, it happened rather silently and for a short time, it’s even surprising that eyewitnesses were found at all.
An additional search for information on the net brought quite interesting results. As it turned out, last December manifestations of such a rare phenomenon as a winter thunderstorm were by no means so rare. On December 2, during a snowfall, a thunderstorm was observed in the Krasnodar Territory (Goryachy Klyuch, Ust-Labinsk, Kurganinsk, Vyselki) and the Republic of Adygea (aul Koshekhabl). Also, a comment was found on the network that on that day muffled thunderclaps were heard in Lutsk (Volyn region, Ukraine). On December 3, a real thunderstorm passed over Irkutsk. On December 7 thunderstorm phenomena were noted in Yaroslavl, on December 9 - in Novosibirsk. At the end of the month, thunderstorms took place in Gorno-Altaysk and Abakan (December 27), as well as in Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa (December 29).
This is probably not a complete chronicle of the December 2015 thunderstorms. As we can see, it is impossible to categorically deny the possibility of thunderstorms in Bobruisk on December 2. Rather, on the contrary, it would be more logical to classify the Belarusian observations as part of the overall picture of thunderstorm activity that took place in the first days of the month in the vast territories of the Eurasian continent. Well, the observation of a small luminous ball in conditions that we can recognize as thunderous, with a high degree of probability should be recognized as the observation of ball lightning. Here is such a winter ball lightning turns out. In a word, an anomaly.
Promotional video:
Author: Victor Gaiduchik