Thunderless Lightning seen in Singapore recently

[Gary]

Check out the videos in this STOMP report:
http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/stomp ... Spore.html

[superiorstream]

Hi,Gary
These are HIGH altitude lightning.As you know we can calculate the distance of the lightning from us by taking the time difference between the seeing of the lightning and the hearing of the thunder and X 330(that is the speed of sound).;this will give us(im meters) the distance where the lightning takes place.
In these cases,its because the distances is too far and hence we cant hear it.Another example is high flying aircraft--we cant here the noise they make.
Having said that,what causes it?I suspect its the sun.Recent solar activities and CME had caused our protective magnetic field to compress;reverse;etc and allow some CME particles to enter selected locations on earth.;also remember we have the Van Allen belt of charged particles almost above our heads.This is just perhaps one of the ENERGY RELEASE MECHANISM observed.
Anyway thanks for the link and also my personal thanks for the earthquake article.

[Gary]

Hi Mr Chia. You are welcome.

Thanks for the lightning info. The way I remember mine was to count "one one thousand, two one thousand, ...." from seeing the lighting till I hear the thunder and divide those seconds by 3 to get the rough distance in kilometers. It was such a cool and fun thing to learn when I was young and that's why I can still remember it till today.

Back then, I was a little a afraid of the sound of thunder. So I treated it like a fun game to see how fast I can stuff my fingers into my ears the moment I see a thunder and start counting immediately. If I still don't hear a loud thunder at about 5 or 6 seconds, then I know it is "safe" to unplug my ears.

Hopefully nobody saw me doing that during those days and thought I was reciting a prayer for the rain to stop.