Summer is the season of sprites. These strange red formations shoot out from the tops of violent thunderstorms. As a result of the release of heat energy from the atmosphere, exotic red lightning directed upward is formed.
Knowing that sprites are traditionally a summer phenomenon, Daniel Scherba from the Czech Republic was very surprised to see them on the night of January 14, in the middle of winter: "These sprites were shot over a thundercloud in the Adriatic Sea, 700 km from where I live." - says Shcherba. On the weather radar data map, red arrows show in which direction the storm was from the Shcherba observatory. “In total, I photographed 16 sprites - for the first time in 2019,” the author of the picture notes.
How did sprites come about in winter? Some researchers believe that sprites are related to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space hitting the top of Earth's atmosphere produce secondary electrons, which in turn provide the momentum that triggers the sprites. It is possible that the red lightning shot during the off-season is precisely due to the increase in the level of cosmic rays during the solar minimum.