Saturday, August 11, 2007

Lightning Strike Round Top Mountain Tornado Fulgurites

We headed up behind Harry Johns to Round Top to see if there was any damage to the trail. At the lookout, one could see damage as the tornado hop-skipped up the mountain side. We arrived at the tower to look around and saw a toppled hemlock and walked out to the power line. It looked like someone tried to set a fire with gasoline - low and behold it was a lightning strike, because creature death was instantaneous along the line & killed every little creature in its path. Little critters included frogs, shrews, beetles, crickets (including a camel cricket), ring neck mud snake, a mouse, spiders, chipmunks & who knows what else. Broken glass in the path was melted and the ashes resembled molten lava. It is really quite amazing how fast death occurred with these because they never were able to get out of the path. The rocks were split, blue scorch marks on several of the stones which enable you to see the skip pattern and furrows in the path. The view on Rt45 looks like many trees got splintered when you look up the mountainside. This is about one mile west of Harry John State Park. There is another area west of Paddy Mt Rd that looks like some trees got hit. CHECK OUT PHOTOS!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that is just amazing-i saw the blue tint you were talking about.

wonder what the weather gurus will say...you should send this to someone at penn state

great ride today too!