Sighting in Wissous, 1960

The witness reported, long after the fact, an observation dating from around 1960, with no more precise date available. In the late afternoon, two people were standing on the front steps of a house. A storm was brewing and the sky was dark grey. Looking northeast, they saw what looked like a white, bulging drop of fire coming straight down out of the storm clouds, its tapered tip pointing upward. The sighting lasted between one and three seconds, after which the phenomenon vanished behind a row of trees. No noise followed, and no fire was found on the ground.

The case was submitted to an expert in lightning research. The expert explained that this kind of observation is not unusual: in strongly pre-storm weather, one or more luminous spheres can descend from the base of a cumulonimbus, like a distress flare slowly falling. When the sphere reaches the ground or a structure, it usually produces a single lightning strike, almost always during a dry thunderstorm. The phenomenon is one of the many forms of ball lightning. GEIPAN therefore classified the case as B: probable observation of ball lightning.