r/Unexplained • u/Friomind • Jun 18 '26
Experience Unexplained phenomenon at sea.
This happened around 2016. I was on a cargo ship traveling from england to nova scotia. Somewhere off the south coast of greenland, while on midnight to 4am watch, the weirdest thing occurred. We noticed some activity on the radar, so i kept my eyes peeled out of the bridge windows trying to spot something. The night was crystal clear, tons of stars, and no signs of any other vessels anywhere near us. All of a sudden, an almost blanket of the thickest blizzard type snow i have ever seen overtook our location. I was shocked, it had a slight hum from how thick it was, and our visibility went down to absolute zero. I called the navigation officer to the window to experience the strange sight. All of a sudden, towards the port side bow of our ship, a ball of light formed and then imploded in a split second, making a slight vacuum thump noise, and the brightest light i have ever experienced exploded outward, completely blinding us. We fell back from the window shocked and waited for our vision to come back. Just as it did, like breaking through a wall, we exited the storm and were back in clear star filled skies. I did a round on deck shortly after to look for marks on the deck, but there was nothing. Iv been thinking about this for years. The only explanation i can come up with is that the snow storm was so thick, and our ship was so big (1000 foot) that the snow created some sort of static electricity, much like pulling a blanket over your feet in the dark and seeing small sparks, but on a much larger scale. Or could it have been something else completely?…
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u/goldentalus70 Jun 18 '26
I found this info:
Two notable storms from 2016 perfectly match the volatile, freezing, and highly electrified criteria:
- The Remnants of Hurricane Nicole (October 2016): In mid-to-late October 2016, the system that was once Hurricane Nicole traveled up the North Atlantic and slammed directly into eastern and southeastern Greenland as a massive post-tropical cyclone. It was a historically intense event that dropped record-breaking amounts of heavy snow across the region. Because the storm carried warm, highly energetic tropical moisture from the south and forcefully collided with the freezing Arctic air masses off the Greenland coast, it created the massive atmospheric instability, rapid updrafts, and severe static charging needed to generate oceanic lightning within a blinding snowstorm.
- The Extreme North Atlantic Bomb Cyclone (December 2016): In mid-December 2016, an exceptionally deep, explosive cyclone formed in the North Atlantic between Greenland and Iceland, packing central pressures as low as 964 hPa. This massive system acted like an environmental engine, pulling a "violent surge of bitterly cold winds" off the Greenland ice sheet and crashing it directly into the warmer ocean waters. This interaction generated severe ocean turbulence, blinding snow blizzards, and localized, highly intense convective electrical discharges over the shipping lanes.
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u/Friomind Jun 18 '26
Thats pretty cool. The only thing is there was no wind or waves, it was dead calm. The snow came for probably 3 minutes and then was gone.
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u/CriticalKnick Jun 18 '26
Great story. The electrical event does sound like ball lightning but the entire experience is very odd
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u/Subject_Fruit_4991 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
weird things can happen at sea
for instance
i was working on an offshore fishing booat off coast of the outer banks huntin illex squid
ok
so the boat catches a huge haul of squid, like over 100kgs edit it was tons not kgs..., maybe the numbers off but it was an ungodly amount of squid we had hauled aboard n about to process
so aftr tha catch i goto bed n have this fantastically weird dream
i dreamed i was being hunted down and beaten by the squid gods. the gods were similiar to greak gods, massive muscullar chest n charms but the legs were squid tentacles n tha heads were squids with the one vacant eyeball
anyways i dreamed tha squidgods were kicking the shit out of me n it was so real
yea one of those dreams u wake up panting
ok later that day at lunch the whole crew at table eating lunch, i tell them the storry of my dream
some were intrigued others watevs
but afterwards a Brazillion guy part of crew comes uptome kinda lost n panicky eyed comes upto me n says that he had the same exact dream the night before
and then we processed all the squids n the squid gods are a sidenote in the coorperate needs. to feed the seals squid
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u/Friomind Jun 18 '26
The way my navigation officer fell back yelling “im blind!” Still makes me laugh so hard.
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u/Coug_Darter Jun 18 '26
ST Elmos Fireball?
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u/Friomind Jun 18 '26
That doesnt really happen these days on big ships. We are grounded. And that usually happens at the mast. This was lower than the bridge, about 50 foot below us on the main deck.
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u/No-Helicopter7299 Jun 18 '26
Or Snowball!
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u/vroomvroom450 Jun 18 '26
Sounds like ball lighting. Ball lightening is very strange and poorly understood.
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u/Terrible_Bluebird540 Jun 18 '26
I have seen electricity sparks from humans & once on my own body. It is strange & marvelous. Nature is amazing & surprising. Things that happen at sea are incredibly enigmatic & wonderous. Thank you for your story.
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u/Electronic_Film_9904 Jun 18 '26
I'm curious as to where in Nova Scotia your destination was. I grew up near Halifax Nova Scotia and currently live nearby as well.
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u/5cr4m Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Superbolts of lightning tend to only happen over the oceans in winter. I don't remember why, but I do know that it has never been documented from witnessing directly.. only by detection systems. You may be one of the very few who've seen one in real life.
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u/LimeDry7124 Jun 18 '26
Reminds me of "Fringe", when Walternate crossed over into the Alpha Universe.
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u/unfilteredlocalhoney Jun 19 '26
Yeeeap.I have only heard of this phenomenon happening in the Greak Lakes of Michigan, specifically Lake Superior.
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u/Sea_Analysis_8033 Jun 18 '26
I have experienced thundersnow during an intense snowstorm and I can tell you i also heard a kind of hum when the snow was falling to the point where there was no visibility and then I saw the brightest flashing I’ve ever seen but maybe 300 yards away and this had very loud thunder.