Claim: A video shows a bolt of lightning striking a river, sparking a large explosion.
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: High-speed camera
text: of interest. Such triggering can also be used to synchronize recording across multiple cameras. The explosion of alkali metals on contact with water has been studied using a high-speed camera. Frame-by-frame analysis of a sodium/potassium alloy exploding in water, combined with molecular dynamic simulations, suggested that the initial expansion may be the result of a Coulomb explosion and not combustion of hydrogen gas as previously thought. Digital high-speed camera footage has strongly contributed to the understanding of lightning when combined with electric field measuring instrumentation and sensors which can map the propagation of lightning leaders through the detection of radio

title: Static electricity
text: (10 kV/cm) depending on humidity. The discharge superheats the surrounding air causing the bright flash, and produces a shock wave causing the clicking sound. The lightning bolt is simply a scaled-up version of the sparks seen in more domestic occurrences of static discharge. The flash occurs because the air in the discharge channel is heated to such a high temperature that it emits light by incandescence. The clap of thunder is the result of the shock wave created as the superheated air expands explosively. Many semiconductor devices used in electronics are very sensitive to the presence of static electricity and

title: Stonados
text: the stones hits a car. Joe, Lee and Maddy investigate finding that the stone is extremely cold, it explodes and shatters destroying the car. The biggest tornado yet forms in the Charles river basin, throwing out stones on both sides of the river, causing widespread destruction and killing a lot of people. Lee and his cameraman televise this event, and advise people to stay in their homes. The Field Operating Agency (FOA) see this announcement and want to organize a widespread evacuation of the coastal areas. Joe predicts that the tornados might start spreading inland, causing even more destruction. A

title: Lightning strike
text: steam explosion can cause rock disintegration and shift boulders. It may be a significant factor in erosion of tropical and subtropical mountains that have never been glaciated. Evidence of lightning strikes includes erratic magnetic fields. Telephones, modems, computers and other electronic devices can be damaged by lightning, as harmful overcurrent can reach them through the phone jack, Ethernet cable, or electricity outlet. Close strikes can also generate electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) – especially during "positive" lightning discharges. Lightning currents have a very fast rise time, on the order of 40 kA per microsecond. Hence, conductors of such currents exhibit marked skin

title: Lightning strike
text: single lightning event is a "flash", which is a complex, multi-stage process, some parts of which are not fully understood. Most cloud to ground flashes only "strike" one physical location, referred to as a "termination". The primary conducting channel, the bright coursing light that may be seen and is called a "strike", is only about one inch in diameter, but because of its extreme brilliance, it often looks much larger to the human eye and in photographs. Lightning discharges are typically miles long, but certain types of horizontal discharges can be upwards of tens of miles in length. The entire

title: Lightning
text: channel. The core temperature of the plasma during the return stroke may exceed 50,000 K, causing it to brilliantly radiate with a blue-white color. Once the electric current stops flowing, the channel cools and dissipates over tens or hundreds of milliseconds, often disappearing as fragmented patches of glowing gas. The nearly instantaneous heating during the return stroke causes the air to expand explosively, producing a powerful shock wave which is heard as thunder. High-speed videos (examined frame-by-frame) show that most negative CG lightning flashes are made up of 3 or 4 individual strokes, though there may be as many as

title: Ball lightning
text: fear of storms." British occultist Aleister Crowley reported witnessing what he referred to as "globular electricity" during a thunderstorm on Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire in 1916. He was sheltered in a small cottage when he "noticed, with what I can only describe as calm amazement, that a dazzling globe of electric fire, apparently between six and twelve inches (15–30 cm) in diameter, was stationary about six inches below and to the right of my right knee. As I looked at it, it exploded with a sharp report quite impossible to confuse with the continuous turmoil of the lightning, thunder

title: Lightning
text: Lightning Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs typically during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning). The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to as a flash. A lightning flash can also be a "strike" if it involves an object on the ground. Lightning creates light in the form of black body radiation from the very hot plasma created by the electron flow, and sound in the form

title: Ball lightning
text: now assume that such a powerful streamer or spark discharge, in its passage through the air, happens to come upon a vacuous sphere or space formed in the manner described. This space, containing gas highly rarefied, may be just in the act of contracting, at any rate, the intense current, passing through the rarefied gas suddenly raises the same to an extremely high temperature, all the higher as the mass of the gas is very small. But although the gas may have been brought to vivid incandescence, yet its pressure may not be very great. If, upon the sudden passage

title: Lightning
text: the late 1920s. The lightning bolt is a common insignia for military communications units throughout the world. A lightning bolt is also the NATO symbol for a signal asset. The Unicode symbol for lightning is ☇ U+2607 Lightning Lightning is a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs typically during a thunderstorm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning). The charged regions in the atmosphere temporarily equalize themselves through this discharge referred to as a flash. A lightning flash can

title: 2014 Beas River Tragedy
text: point and yell "Dam" just a few seconds before the water gushed in. Footage surfaced on the internet two days after the incident which showed how the victims were caught unaware before the river carried them away. The video was shot by Bihari Lal, who was present about 100 metres above the river bed on a hilly area where a wedding was being held . Sensing the danger Kiran Kumar Muppidi and Asish Mantha selflessly started helping the other students to reach the river bank. It has been reported by the surviving students that Kiran Kumar Muppidi had saved 5

title: Fantasmic!
text: pyrotechnics were redesigned during the winter 2008 refurbishment. The show's final blast does not come from any of the 6 pyro barges, but rather 5 mines located along the island banks of the river. The fire on water effect is created by natural gas lines running beneath the river. The gas simply bubbles up to the surface and 3 flame throwers along the banks of the river ignite the gas. With the original dragon, it initially would be the source of ignition for the water. This would cause the face of the dragon to burn and so 3 flame throwers

title: Ball lightning
text: Ball lightning Ball lightning is an unexplained and potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. Though usually associated with thunderstorms, the phenomenon lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many early reports claim that the ball eventually explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences, leaving behind the odor of sulfur. Until the 1960s, most scientists treated reports of ball lightning skeptically, despite numerous accounts from around the world. Laboratory experiments can produce effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning,

title: Lightning strike
text: expressed concern that many countries had no official standards for the installation of lightning rods. All events associated or suspected of causing damage are called "lightning incidents" due to four important factors. As such it is often inconclusive, albeit highly probably a lightning flash was involved, hence categorizing it as a "lightning incident" covers all bases. Lightning strike A lightning strike or lightning bolt is an electric discharge between the atmosphere and an Earth-bound object. They mostly originate in a cumulonimbus cloud and terminate on the ground, called cloud to ground (CG) lightning. A less common type of strike, called

title: Ball lightning
text: to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar", discussed "globular lightning". He describes it as slow-moving balls of fire or explosive gas that sometimes fall to the earth or run along the ground during a thunderstorm. He said that the balls sometimes split into smaller balls and may explode "like a cannon". In his book "Thunder and Lightning", translated into English in 1875, French science writer Wilfrid de Fonvielle wrote that there had been about 150 reports of globular lightning: Globular lightning seems to be particularly attracted to metals; thus it will seek the railings of balconies, or else water or

title: Duck and Cover (film)
text: could avoid or reduce the severity of the burns you would have otherwise received. For those not at ground zero, like a shortened version of the delay between lightning and thunder, there would be a delay between the flash (indicating the need to duck and cover) and the arrival of the blast wave, which will shatter windows turning non-safety glass into missile-like shards, and cause other blast or impact injuries. To highlight the effect that being indoors can make, despite the lethal radiation & blast zone extending well past her position at Hiroshima, Akiko Takakura survived the effects of a

title: Hiroshima (book)
text: a "brilliant yellow" flash and toppled into the river. He injured his shoulder severely. After returning to her home from a safe area, Mrs. Nakamura saw a flash "whiter than any white she had" seen before. She was thrown into the next room while her children were buried in debris. While reading his morning paper, Father Wilhem Kleinsorge witnesses a "terrible flash ... [like] a large meteor colliding with the earth". He found himself in the vegetable garden of the missionary with only small cuts. Standing alone in a corridor, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki saw a "gigantic photographic flash". The explosion

title: Lightning injuries
text: its way to the ground. In "ground" strikes, the bolt lands near the person and is conducted by a connection to the ground (usually the feet), due to the voltage gradient in the earth. This can still cause substantial injury. Counterintuitively, lightning current flowing through the victim's body resistance may develop a high voltage sufficient to "flash" around the skin or clothing to the ground in a "direct strike", resulting in a surprisingly benign outcome. The lightning often leaves skin burns in characteristic Lichtenberg figures, sometimes called "lightning flowers"; they may persist for hours or days, and are a useful

title: Jonas Valley
text: 1962, East German officials interviewed contemporary witness who claimed to have sighted atomic weapons tests on the training ground in March 1945. Cläre Werner, for example, a former administrator of the adjacent Veste Wachsenburg who is now deceased, assured officials that she had seen a glowing light, as bright "as hundreds of bolts of lightning," red inside and yellow on the outside, at approximately 9:30 p.m. on March 4, 1945. Werner went on to describe how a powerful squall had moved across the mountains. The next day, she said, she and others in the areas had had nosebleeds, headaches, and

title: Ball lightning
text: same to a high temperature, thus liberating suddenly a great quantity of gas by evaporating or volatilizing the substance with the result of being itself dissipated or exploded. Obviously, also, it may be expected that the conducting mass of the ball originated as described, and moving through a highly insulating medium, will be likely to be highly electrified, which accords with many of the observations made." Several other hypotheses have been proposed to explain ball lightning: Ball lightning Ball lightning is an unexplained and potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects that vary