Heart Lightning Discovered Over Baltimore: Time Lapse Video And Photos

Have you heard of heat lightning? That is the term for a common occurrence in the summer, when a distant thunderstorm produces a lot of lightning at night but is too far away to hear the thunder. A humid air mass would help scatter the light farther, and that weather is most likely in summer. On July 6th, a band of storms erupted over Baltimore producing flooding rain, but also a spectacular view captured by our friend Tim Shahan. Perched on top of the Harbor Court Tower, he point his camera north-northeast to follow the direction of the storm. The time lapse video below highlights the lightning he saw.  See all the individual high resolution lighting bolts in the slide show below as well. This one image in particular was something I’ve never seen before and fondly call heart lightning. There are many other types of lightning such as sprites, jets, and elves which you can find in the links at the bottom of this post.

I know, this heart is just a shape of the completed electrical current zig zagging through the sky, but it might as well show the love these storms have for us lately. It has rained five of the first six days this month, all after the record wettest June.