Bead Lightning
Skizze Perlschnurblitz
Phases of development of a bead lightning.
Sketch drawn by H. Seipelt and taken from MM/1997/P.147
Bead lightnings are a very rare type of lightning. The lightning does not vanish homogenously in its full length, hut disintegrates into several beads(2). The beads can even develope tails(3). The whole phenomenon lasts about 0~2 to 0.5 seconds~ The reason for this is still not known. But a connection with heavy rain, however, has been taken into consideration.