That looks awesome as hell. O.O

Maybe it was a combination of lightning and tornado? Cool part of nature / history I hadn't heard of before.

That's one theory, It was reported that extreme amounts of lightning occurred with that storm, but high rates of lightning in tornadic storms is pretty common. Saw it myself in May, and boy what a show.

The current "best guess" as to what caused the intense glow, reportedly brighter than an Arc Welder from one observer, is some sort of intense St. Elmo's fire generated within the vortex. Or maybe some weird hybrid of St Elmo's fire and Ball Lightning that managed to fill the vortex? Who knows..

I guess if the fire would burn pure & hot enough it'd become blue as well, that sounds insane tho :D

well, the blue color could be Ionized air which produces a blue-violet color. That's why the St. Elmo's fire theory kinda makes sense, as it often appears blue-violet. But yeah could also be extremely high temperatures too!

Either way, its super fascinating. I wish cameras were more widespread back then.

Maybe we will see more of these since the global warming is undoubtedly moving fast forward which means a lot more extreme storms. I just read the latest estimate which was that rare weather phenomena that used to happen approx once in a thousand years has now increased to once in ten years (long droughts/heatwaves, floods, high speed storms), and it'll keep getting even more frequent if the warming isn't stopped. Unfortunate for humanity but I guess the silver lining is that extreme weather is exciting.

Indeed. It'll be more extremes all over.

Dude I've been fascinated with this tornado for years since I discovered it. This would've been a spectacle to see in person.

I know, right? Sooo freaky. Toledo 1964 as well had eerie luminosity

Yeah I heard about that! It's also strange that we haven't seen another tornado do something like this since.

I think there's been maybe one or two in the 70s or 80s, i remember reading about it somewhere i think...

But yeah, strange we haven't seen any recent reports of similar things. It must be an extremely rare phenomenon, no doubt, but still a bit odd.