Ball lightning is a rare, scientifically not yet well-understood phenomenon usually occurring during thunderstorms - often together with a lightning strike, lasting a few seconds, mostly near the Earth's surface; they disappear silently or with a bang. Due to their rarity, all ball lightning reports - even those from long ago - are of interest to research. For years, Meteoros (most recently via Sven Näther) has been collecting ball lightning observations.
If you yourself have observed a ball lightning or know of one, please write to me with your report and send it to me at alexander.keul@plus.ac.at- thank you very much! When, where, how long, and in what situation did you and/or others see something? Did you see the object form/disappear? Were you inside a building/outdoors? Can you draw the object? Did it leave traces?
Every report is processed by us according to data protection regulations (GDPR 2018), meaning your personal data will not be shared and the case data will be processed anonymously for scientific purposes. Depending on the report, we may send you a small questionnaire or briefly call you back, especially in current cases with exact location and time details, if you provide your phone number in the report.
We appreciate every report because it advances research. From time to time, there are evaluations of the observation data in our newsletter.