Sighting in La Croisille-sur-Briance, August 2, 2013

The account was collected in February 2017 and concerns an observation made in August 2013. Around midnight, a woman driving a car in a very heavy thunderstorm saw a large, very bright white ball come out of the clouds vertically, then slowly sink down behind the trees. The sighting lasted about ten seconds and no particular noise was heard. Frightened, the witness kept driving. No other witness account of the phenomenon was gathered.

The case was submitted to a lightning expert. They said this kind of sighting is not rare: during stormy weather, one or several luminous spheres can descend from the base of a cumulonimbus, like a distress flare slowly falling. It is one of the many forms of ball lightning. Another GEIPAN case, from Wissous (91) in 1960, includes a clear drawing by the witness that also shows lightning coming down from the clouds. Because so much time had passed, the weather conditions could not be checked, but the witness did describe a storm and had themselves thought of ball lightning, without being sure. The GEIPAN classified the case as A: a very highly probable misidentification of ball lightning.