24.01.1998, pretty cold and foggy, upon the Riegelsattl (1029m), a high located
pass connecting the plain of the Danube near Deggendorf with the dale of the river Regen crossing the Bavarian Forest. Its a so called "saddle" between the two mountains there, the Dreitannenriegel (1092m) at the one hand and the Breitenauriegel (1114m) at the other hand. The term "saddle" results of the shape of the altimeter-profile lines visible in the topographical cards of that area. Such shapes of passes are quite often here in the mellow-shaped Bavarian Forest. I personally often search such "saddles" in the cards to look for the best option to get to the other side of the mountain during my biketours. You can imagine its a difference to climb for an altitude of 1000m e.g. if you needed to climb else where only up to 800 meters! So buying and studying these 1:25000 cards is worth it!

This area is located near the BMW-Bikepark Geißkopf, the worlds biggest bikeparcours in its discipline. Every mountainbike-freak should have been there at least one time, in most of the cases he'll return anyway. A solid base of handling your bike is necessarily there due to downhills of 200 meters altitude loss and partly a level of the tracks lead at 35% downwards. But don't worry - at the basestation of the bikepark you can rent the whole equipment needed to do that stuff - from helmets over full suspension bikes up to full protection-wear. After doing a few downhill races you can be frank to yourself and think about if you are really such a champion on the bike as you always thought before ! I came to the conclusion that i am by far not so a good downhill-man i claimed before. But try it on your own to learn to know your real abilities on the bike !!!
During winter, this area is also a insider resort to go skiing in the nice winterwood there above. You'll hardly find a situation overcrowded like sometimes at the Großer Arber - the most famous mountain in the Bavarian Forest.

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Observing the Weather and especially Thunderstorms and Severe Weather

Here now a nice thunderstorm cell, viewed as it has already passed my home town Plattling in the summer 199?.
Behind the cell low Cumuls Fractus is moving by, while the main part of the cloud has already reached the top of the troposphere called tropopause. This zone working like a limitation layer to all clouds excepted those from volcanoes, is located here in Europe usually in heights of 9-14 km above ground.

As the sunlight is very hard in these height-levels, the cumulonimbus reflects the bright sun there above with a rarely seen white colour to earth. Clouds who reached this border can only lay themselves to the lower side of this layer and shaping to what everyone knows - a cloud like an "amboss". Clouds of this behaviour consist usually of a mix of rain, hail and snow moved by severe winds in the inner cloud. Thats why pilots of ultra-light-airplanes strictly avoid those clouds - even if you've ever flown through a thunderstorm by an regular aircraft you'll know the turbulencies and the conditions inside such a 10 km high giant. The hardened edges at the upper part of the Cb at the photo indicate vigorous up- and downdrafts inside the tower of the cloud. Speeds up to 130 miles per hour moving up and down are no exception. Therefore a light aircraft would be crashed within minutes inside that cloud. No maneuvering is possible when catched in such a electrical monster. Even if the storm dont crashes the plain - hail and lightning will do it anyway.

Every corn of ice and every drop of rain also contains a certain voltage - either positive or negative. The upper part is an opponent of the base of the cloud and the base of the cloud is loaded vice-versa to the ground(-objects) too. This enables to generate the storm lightning between clouds and clouds and between cloud and ground. Your head also can be a target for lightning, you always are a member of the earth-voltage-field when moving on earth. So dont be stupid and go inside when thunderstorm is approaching - and please not only when it is like that -" Oh! - a lightning!!" - the next second the bang! - thats too late in every case. Well known scientist advise to seek shelter already when the thunderstorm is still within a distance of 8 km, in other words, you hear the thunder 24 seconds after you saw the lightning. This is in my opinion a good advice, because many cases are known, where the lightning bolt leaves the cloud far above the ground and passes many kilometers outside the cell to finally beat at an area, where no rain falls, and no one is expecting a near strike. Consider that single lightnings of more than 50 km length have been repeatedly observed !! One of the deadliest errors is, to believe, oh, the rain is over, so i can surely go out and nothing will happen. Thats totally wrong, the rain is no indication for a possible strike by lightning.

There are also pretty unresearched types of lightning, namely the "blue jets" and the "red sprights" , first seen by research-pilots by the Airforce in their jets flying at the level of the CBs. They saw such ones upwards moving, and not bright but braod light-phenomenons of this red and blue color. They are only able to view when in the CB below simultanously ignits a severe lightning. They are caused by such severe ones.

Another thing is the balllightning, which is hardly denied by most of the scientists doing studying these topics. I'll discuss them a lot more here but i have to inform what's the latest thories are concerning it.
Well, visitors, i want to finish here, just think about the facts going on in these clouds over your homes every summer, it's worth keep on informing.

The Author, 19.03.2001