Ball lightning is distinct from St. Elmo's fire.
Notes on verification
Multiple independent, credible sources (physics preprint, Scientific American, HowStuffWorks, ScienceNotes) confirm ball lightning and St. Elmo's fire are physically distinct phenomena, despite folk conflation. [cascade flags: aggregator_dropped_primary_exists | tier=silver indep_score=0.867 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable]
Sources
- Ball lightning (wikipedia)
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/2411.00240 (corroboration)
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quotwhat-causes-the-stran/ (corroboration)
- https://sciencenotes.org/st-elmos-fire-weather-phenomenon/ (corroboration)