Rather than distortions of suspended droplets, perhaps these are "sundogs" or parhelia optical patterns caused by solar reflection from aligned ice crystals. A changing e-field could rotate all the ice plates or needles, causing the sundog to suddenly change shape and position. Or less likely, perhaps some condensing droplets are changing size under e-field influence (growth/shrinkage of small droplets is known to be altered by strong electrostatic fields.)



I just heard that relatively tiny e-field of 1V/mm will influence the orientation of suspended ice crystals, and 10V/mm will totally align them. Storm fields are far stronger, so "leaping sundogs" should be quite common. See 2002 Foster/Hallett paper on ice crystal electrostatics, via Google Scholar.

"If you haven't found something strange during the day,

it hasn't been much of a day." - J. A. Wheeler

LINKS

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;

the point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei

Speculations (new 7/2011)

E-fields could cause transient flashing or brightness alteration of high ice clouds during earthquakes. Piezoelectric output of bedrock? If a slight cirrus overcast should become totally aligned by strong fields, ice clouds would no longer have random particle orientation to produce optical scattering. They might change from white to transparent, and eyewitnesses might report a sudden "darkening of the sky."

Same as above: transient flashing or brightness alteration of cirrus clouds in the period before earthquakes. Various quake-precursor phenomena perhaps may produce significant e-fields.

Very wide static (or moving) bright/dark bands in high ice clouds clouds caused by RF standing waves in the Earth's Schumann atmospheric EM waveguide. Low-frequency AC e-fields should align ice crystals, although the threshold value is probably larger than 1V/mm.

Distortion of the subsun, or perhaps coherent shifting of the subsun. Subsuns observed from airliners resemble solar reflections on water, but if their observed position is altered by storm fields, the subsun would not be seen to appear directly below the real sun. In that case the perceived glowing spot might be reported as an unidentified aircraft which follows the airliner. If such a subsun were observed to move during lightning discharges, easily attaining perceived velocities far in excess of the speed of sound, the eyewitness reports of this would be very strange.

Reports of two observed suns. This most often should occur at sunrise/sunset during conditions of wide-area overcast of high ice clouds. If ice crystals are aligned and a "super-sun" happens to be moved into a position visible from the ground, then eyewitnesses will report seeing a second sun accompanying the real one.

Boloid reports with no boloid. This might occur most often during sunset/sunrise with high ice cloud overcast. If ice crystals are aligned by e-fields and a "super-sun" becomes visible from ground locations, and if a dynamically changing e-field then causes the supersun to move across the (electrically darkened) sky, eyewitnesses may report seeing a giant meteor. But because different supersuns would be observed from different locations on the ground, the eyewitness reports of boloid trajectory would inexplicably conflict. Since dynamically changing e-fields wouldn't necessarily produce an ordinary bolide trajectory, the "boloid" might be seen to move in non-parabolic trajectories, to stop in place, or to suddenly change direction. And of course no evidence of impact would exist.

"I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable." - Charles Darwin

LUNAR SUBSUN?