One of my movie-star crushes from the 80s was Rob Lowe. (I know I just aged myself). He was a member of the brat pack and one of the stars of the 1985 coming of age movie, St. Elmo’s Fire. The plot revolves around a group of recent graduates from Georgetown University trying to navigate the waters of life after college. In one scene, Rob’s character Billy is attempting to help his friend Jules, played by Demi Moore, through her breakdown. He tells her that the drama she is in the midst of isn’t real. It is just like St. Elmo’s Fire. He then explains this phenomenon as “electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them, there was no fire, there wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20GcL1nyzE8
Hold the presses, Billy! This meteorologist must object! St. Elmo’s Fire is a real phenomenon, and there was a St. Elmo. Let’s look a little deeper, shall we?
St Elmo's Fire on the windshield of a passenger jet last night as it passed south of the Fultondale storm/tornado last night. Photo from Ziggy Jirik pic.twitter.com/AKT1Egg6N9
— James Spann (@spann) January 27, 2021
Per NOAA, “St. Elmo’s Fire is a colorful discharge of atmospheric electricity that typically occurs during a thunderstorm. When a sharp object (such as a ship’s mast) comes in contact with an extraordinarily high electrical field and a large number of electrons, the electrons can glow in various colors, like a neon sign, resulting in this rare phenomenon.” The glow is a blue or violet color, and the sharp object could also be spires, chimneys, and even aircraft wings.
https://youtu.be/Lgv-3ITbOm4
Billy was on the right track about sailors and their connection to St. Elmo’s Fire. But he was incorrect in stating there was not a St. Elmo. One of the patron saints of sailors was St. Erasmus of Formia, also known as Elmo. He was an early Christian bishop and martyr.
How did Elmo become a saint to the sailors? During my research on this topic, I found a story stating that Erasmus was preaching, and lightning struck the ground near him. He survived. Sailors began to believe that Elmo could protect them from storms while at sea. During a thunderstorm, that “colorful discharge of atmospheric electricity” would sometimes be seen on a masthead. Sailors would see that as the presence of Elmo. The phenomenon, St. Elmo’s Fire, is named after St. Erasmus.
Typically, paintings depicting Elmo (like the one above) show him holding a windlass, an apparatus for hoisting heavy weights. On a boat, it can be used to help raise an anchor. This icon also signifies Elmo as a patron of sailors.
St. Elmo’s Fire was observed during a tornado outbreak in 1955. In an article entitled, “Storm Electricity Aspects of the Blackwell/Udall Storm of 25 May 1955”, Don Burgess documents the “unusually vigorous electrical activity” seen during this event. Burgess was 8-years-old and observed the storm’s early life from the western edge of Stillwater, OK. He notes, “Later, as the nighttime Blackwell tornado formed south-southeast of Tonkawa, it was made visible by frequent lightning flashes. At Blackwell, very frequent cloud-to-ground lightning was observed ahead of the tornado, and unusual electrical activity was seen in and around the tornado. Very bright electrical discharges were seen within the funnel and ground-originating corona current (also known as St. Elmo’s Fire) was seen just ahead of the tornado.”
Sources:
Top Five: Weird Ocean Phenomena – NOAA
Who are the Three Patron Saints of Sailors? – Elmo, Christopher and Brendan