An account in Indre, France

Recent testimony (16/02/2015) of an old observation with no date of the day (the 1st is given arbitrarily). The witness reports three observations in the same document: we are dealing here with the third observation. In August 1960 a little before noon, the witness, then aged 10, observes the flashes of a violent storm when he sees appear above him a very bright light yellow ball, which moves slowly on a straight trajectory; it stops above the roof of a nearby house, returns to its starting point and disappears hidden by the trees. The observation report of this phenomenon was submitted to the Lightning Laboratory, which identified it as a typical case of ball lightning, as the witness had suspected. The ending is not so strange, ball lightning often follows the updraft vortices of the cumulonimbus, and the description of the general atmosphere is significant of the passage of a storm accompanied by an Arcus (it is almost night, sky very low). It is common to see "chimneys" climbing toward the anvil, and often one sees the sky and even some sun rays during the storm. This case is classified "B": probable observation of ball lightning. The absence of a precise date does not allow a formal verification of this hypothesis.