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St. Martin's Beads
Mon Jun 16, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
There sometimes occurs a stroke of lightning which appears as a string of beads. We call it
bead lightning. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook.
Some folks believe that bead lightning is formed when sections of a recent bolt remain visible
for a short time after the discharge. Others say that the string of beads effect is caused by
clouds obscuring visibility along parts of the strike path. And there is some speculation
that it is a connected series of "ball lightning", another poorly understood phenomenon. This
flavor of lightning is sometimes also known as St Martin's Beads.
How this odd name came about can be traced to the parish of St Martin-le-Grand in London. The
area was long noted as the home of makers of imitation jewelry, and not necessarily jewelry of
the highest quality. In fact, it was so notorious that at one time Henry VI ordered that no
one who made counterfeit brooches, chains, beads and the like, would be allowed to live there.
Of course, the merchants paid no attention to the royal edict, and trade continued to
flourish. But because this rare form of lightning is not seen as "real" lightning, it was
given the back-handed compliment of being called "St Martin's Beads.
You may have heard that there is also St Martin's Summer, a stretch of mild weather occuring
about November 11, his feast day. So St. Martin, with an assist from Henry VI, came to be
connected to two weather phenomenon. You can find out more about bead lightning and other
saintly weather at our web site at mountwashington.org/notebook.
Writer Mary Reed contributed today's show. Our show is produced by the Mount Washington
Observatory with funding provided by Subaru of America and the National Science Foundation.
Today's Links
More on Bead Lightning
http://www.macnexus.org/scds/zachsci/Lightning.html
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