I'm not sure if this is going to show up right, so wish me luck.
Tonight a storm ran through, so I was photographing lighting. This particular strike, however, was stunningly intense. From the thunder delay, I judge it's about a mile away. The image in my camera was way over-exposed (1 sec, ISO 100), but I thought I might recover something with adjustments in Adobe Lightroom.
After adjustment, I was surprised to see there is only one small clearly defined bolt, and it's not that big. It's also sort of smooth and ropey which I don't understand. However, the real puzzler is why there's such a very bright, wide column going up into the clouds.
The clear bolt appears to be hitting power lines leading to a power station a few miles away.
I guess my real question is why the brightness was so intense, but there's no clear bolt. Is it just very diffused in the cloud?
