St. Elmo's Fire
by CanadianLyndsay on Mar.25, 2007, under z-Old Posts
My sister loved the movie St. Elmo’s Fire. I admit, I’ve never seen it. But I know that it’s a cheesy 80s movie starring Emilio Estefez, Demi Moore, etc. What I didn’t know is that it’s also a phenomena that occurs on an airplane.
Sunday night, coming back from Winnipeg, I found that there were no passenger seats available for the Regina to Calgary leg. This meant I was offered the “jump seat”, a little fold down seat located in the cockpit of the plane. It was a lot of fun, the pilots were great.
As we were landing into some low heavy clouds, I started seeing lightning. But it wasn’t lightning it was St. Elmo’s Fire. I guess the friction between the clouds and the static electricity around the nose of the plane create these beautiful blue lightning bolts… of course, they’re not lightning, but a similar theory. Seeing these blue bolts flash along the windshield and nose was beautiful.
My first time flying jump, and I got to witness this. Poor Marshall, in all his many hours flying in the cockpit, has never seen it once. I hope he gets to see it soon. It was stunning.
