Static Electricity in a Thunderstorm
A place not to experience St. Elmo's Fire is inside a Thunderstorm. What is it? Its a greenish yellow glow surrounding a plane enveloped with static electricity.
Pilots see it on the propeller of their plane, like in a thunderstorm. On a instrument flight into Atlanta I was greeted by a massive black wall when I exited one cloud formation. The massive cloud formation was a building thunderstorm, I hoped, while wondering why I was vectored into it's jaws.
I told my passenger to tighten his seat belt as tightly as he could; The lightening would be everywhere and bright; Water would hit the plane hard, like from a firehouse and St. Elmo's Fire may envelope our plane.
I slowed the plane down from cruise speed (It was a 1964 S Model Bonanza) to approximately 130 MPH, lowered the landing gear and entered the storm - all within about one minute - so it seemed.
I was prepared for the worst and didn't expect to get out of this alive or in one piece. Strangely, it was smooth flying. My passenger was giving me all the details while I was on instruments.
"Look", he said. "The propeller is glowing green, just like you said it would!" St. Elmo,s Fire!
In my scan I noticed the Vertical Speed Indicator was pegged at 5,000 ft./minute. Suddenly, after approximately 45 seconds we popped out of the thunderstorm. I looked at the altimeter and it read 9,500 feet. We entered at a cruising altitude of 6,000 feet preparing to hear from Atlanta Center for information about our destination, Fulton County Airport.
Center was talking with us immediately after we exited from the storm, asking us if we were alright or suffered structural damage. Center lost us just before we entered the storm.
He reviewed our information that indicated we gained 3,500 feet in little over 45 seconds while in the growing storm. The updrafts were very strong. Roughly, the updrafts were reaching 80 ft./second. Well above the maximum climb speed of the high performance bonanza. The large amount of air flowing over the plane created static electricity that we saw as St. Elmo's Fire.
Fortunately, the storm was just building with only updrafts. If it matured and downdrafts were present I wouldn't be here to write this Post. We couldn't control the plane if both up and down drafts existed.
