Anyone experienced St Elmo's Fire?

[Captain X]

Saw it on the windscreen of the E145 coming out of MSP one night. FO saw it all over her side and asked what it was. We were IMC with embedded activity all around us climbing thru FL210. At about FL280, she asked me if I had forgotten to turn the landing lights off (they were). I asked her why and she said, "It looks like we have the high beams on." I looked out front and sure enough, there was a big beam of light extending out into the clouds in front of us. I raised my seat up to see a basketball-sixed orb of blue electical energy on the tip of the radome.

At that point, we were one big lightning rod.....I'm glad we had all the dischargers and bonding straps in the right places!

Used to see it on the tip tanks of Lears all the time when fling thru cloud up high at night.

Falcon 20 gets it kickin pretty good too on the flat panel in the center windscreen.

The precip static drives me nuts though!

 

[Lindy]

Last night....

Last night we were picking our way through the thunderstorms that stretched across the midwest -- our route was MDW to MKC -- and had St. Elmo's Fire to entertain us both ways.....

The best display was topping thunderstorms at 430 (did I say we really wanted higher??) and we had beams of light from both tips about 6' in front of the aircraft in addition to a beam of light off the nose of the aircraft and the glareshield was full of color. Funny thing, in the lear, I have only seen blue. Would be neat to see some other color.

And, Is it a bad thing when you ask ATC if anyone has been through in the last 20 minutes and inquired as to their ride and the very nice Air Traffic Controller individual states "[Our Call Sign] NO ONE has been through here in 4 hours....." Yes, all the airlines still flying got a chuckle out of that.....I guess everyone else decided to deviate...did I say freight dog?

I am very fortunate to see it weekly (and of late, it has been dialy with my routes). IT is a beautiful phenonemon.

 

[falcondriver]

The best I ever saw was in a cargo Falcon 20 at 370. We had just topped the cells and started a steep descent into MCI. It was about 1 inch wide bolts of light across all 3 panels of the windshield. They started at the bottom, they were about 5 inches apart. I had to grab the copilots hat and put it on, so I could see. The funniest part is when the copilot saw it and yelled holly **** what is that. He had never seen it before...
FD