Comments on FT442
• Ulrich Magin’s account In Strange Continent [p.22] of small dots seen after an enormous flash of lightning, reminds me of an experience I had while living in the Copperbelt region of Zambia. The area was notorious for thunderstorms, and on at least two occasions I was looking out the window at the storm, when there was a deafening crack of thunder, and a simultaneous blinding flash of lightning, after which all the lights went out, and a mass of stationary tiny white lights filled my vision, apparently outside the window. At the time I put this down to an optical effect, but perhaps it was an electrical phenomenon. I also remember an occasion when we were driving somewhere and facing an enormous dark storm cloud, with lightning frequently flashing within it, but not discharging into the ground. It was quite a dramatic sight.
• The account of the waves generated by the ferry to Palma, also in Strange Continent [p.23], brought back memories as well. In my late teens I worked at the hovercraft terminal in Ryde, which is about 5.7 miles across from Southsea. Several times the huge liner SS France sailed into Southampton and out again, and even though it was travelling slowly, the bow wave came right up onto the hovercraft slipway at Ryde, and presumably at Southsea too.
• In the article Enigmatic UAPs [p.28], Nigel Watson quotes Andrew May as saying that you can’t have an “Identified Anomalous Phenomenon”, as it’s “a contradiction in terms”. I have to disagree. An anomaly is simply something outside the norm. For example, conjoined twins are an anomaly, but science now understands how that occurs. However, I share his criticism of the term UAP when it is used to stand for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. As a replacement for the term UFO, Aerial is the only term that makes sense.
• Jenny Randles’s account of a tornado, given in UFO Files [p.29], is similar to an experience my wife and I had while living on a housing estate in the south of England. We were in our house when we heard a sound like very heavy rainfall. No rain was falling, but the nearby trees were being blown in every direction at once. It stopped after a few minutes. Next morning we saw on the news that a “small” tornado had touched down on our estate the previous evening. We went out to look for damage, and a few hundred yards away we saw a house whose garage roof had been blown clean off and disappeared. On its way, it had hit the corner of a neighbouring house and knocked off a chunk of brickwork. Not up to Tornado Alley standards, but impressive enough.
Dave Miles
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